[BradJudy]

I was going to just post this in my Prague thread, but I figured we could make it a general purpose thread and everyone can contribute. 

The intent is to post examples where you took a shot, then repeated the shot in a different way and how that made a real difference in the result. 

I'll get the ball rolling with a few.  I'm only an amateur and I'll just do some basics.  Perhaps others will add more nuanced items. 

Here's a classic of a room lit mostly by sunlight first taken with the auto mode on the camera:



Then manually reducing the exposure to match the outside light and show the countryside:



I think the second image works much better.  One could do an HDR combination, but I expect the result would look unnatural (as HDR often does). 

Here's one I think would be a common tourist picture (one of the statues on the popular Charles Bridge):



Which gains a lot of impact, IMO, when framed with a bit more of the surroundings (one of the two flanking statues):



Of course, this depends on having something interesting to include in the frame. 

I don't have a before/after, but this was a popular trick for me on this trip.  Want to take a good picture of a pretty ceiling?  Turn off the flash, set the shutter timer, set the camera on the floor, hit the button and step back.  Since some locations didn't allow tripods, this was quite useful.  I also did some by setting it on a table or pew. 



Who can forget the cardinal rule of waiting for the right light?  These two were taken less than an hour apart as the sun finally came out one afternoon.  Since the church was facing west, I wandered back over once the sun came out to get a better picture.





Please post your tips/lessons with examples.

[Bob in St. Louis]

Good thread, very good idea. However, I delete my bad ones immediately.
Don't want any evidence.

Bob

[BradJudy]

Heh - keep them around next time Bob.  I usually only delete something if it was messed up for a reason out of my control (someone stepped in front of me, the autofocus freaked out, etc).

Here's an exposure time one of a TV tower lit up at night. 

0.6s exposure:



2s exposure:

[Bob in St. Louis]

Ohhh, that's cool lookin'! 

I'll try to remember to save them.
Although, it's against my "analretentivity" genes to keep something I don't want so it'll be hard to do. 

Bob

[BradJudy]

Hmmm...not only is this thread not very popular, but I seem to have killed all Eye Fidelity circle posting. 

[Bob in St. Louis]

I would have thought this thread would have been more popular as well. It does serve as a good tutorial for newbees (well it would have served as a good tutorial). 

It's all your fault Brad. You killed Eye-Fidelity...............

So...Since it's only you and me, whatcha wanna talk 'bout? 

Bob

[Grumpy_Git]

I've been looking for a thread like this for years and also wanted to try something similar myself but film was always too expensive to waste on taking hundreds of shots slightly differently, best way for ME to learn is by trying everything.

I would post myself but all my photos are "bad" ones   

Maybe I'll get out this weekend with the camera and see what I can come up with.....

Nick.

[BradJudy]

I've been looking for a thread like this for years and also wanted to try something similar myself but film was always too expensive to waste on taking hundreds of shots slightly differently, best way for ME to learn is by trying everything.

That's one of the beauties of shooting digital, plus the EXIF tagging means you don't have to remember to write down settings for each shot.  I played a lot more with manual mode settings on this trip than I have in the past. 

One could learn a lot through trial and error for minimal $$ with something like a Canon A590 in manual mode (only ~$110 and $5-10 for a 2GB card which can hold hundreds of shots).  Probably for even less with a decent used digital.  While higher performing cameras can add to the possibilities, a good eye with a basic camera usually trumps a less thoughtful eye and a nice camera. 

[ipy]

If I may, the other pluses of shooting in digital is the ability to do post processing later on  .

Here's a before & after pp shot of a classic underexposed image taken...






 

[BradJudy]

Cool - quite an exotic destination. 

Basic post-processing before and after is a good idea too.  I do very minimal post processing (straighten, crop, levels adjustment if needed) but I'm sure others do more and can show examples. 

I'm definitely a believer in a good crop making a big difference. 

[ipy]

...Basic post-processing before and after is a good idea too.  I do very minimal post processing (straighten, crop, levels adjustment if needed) but I'm sure others do more and can show examples. 

I'm definitely a believer in a good crop making a big difference. 

Yes, I do at least a bit of pp with most of my images.  YMMV but I usually slightly underexposed my images so I have more flexibility during pp vs overexposed.  Somehow I find underexposed images easier to fix.

Here's one I took of Andy Worhol's sculpture which has gone through pp ie: straighten, crop & levels adjustment....

[BradJudy]

Nice photo and crop ipy.  I like how the angle you chose really draws your attention to the statue's eye.

I just did a quick PShop sequence on one of my trip pictures for fun. 

Here's the original:



Followed by a simple straighten (2.5 degrees CW) and crop:



Perhaps you decide that the cables are too distracting:



Maybe the big brother camera is too?



Personally, I like having the camera because I think it adds to the idea of the sign forbidding an action.

Anyway, I usually don't erase things like in this example, but its fun to play with sometimes. 

[BradJudy]

I'm going to try and keep this thread going.  Here's a simple one about changing perspective on an object.  (Forgive the repeated religious theme - so much of the content in Prague was religious in nature).

A crucifix outside a church in Kutna Hora, Czech Republic with a typical straight-on perspective:




Moving closer and angling up framed the item in the large window of the church, providing a more dramatic effect:

[nathanm]

Isn't the Czech Republic also home to that wicked cool ossuary made all of human bones?

[BradJudy]

Isn't the Czech Republic also home to that wicked cool ossuary made all of human bones?

Yes, although it isn't made of bones, it just displays bones from tens of thousands of plague victims in an artistic manner:





Keeping with the theme of the thread, here's another picture using the "lay the camera on the floor" technique. 

[nathanm]

I know, I meant to say "decorated with".  So are these your shots, were you there?

[BradJudy]

Yep, those are my shots.  We visited the Sedlec Ossuary on a side-trip from Prague.  It's nearby and one of the popular day trips (along with the adjacent town of Kutna Hora where my last example photo was taken). 

Now that you've popped into the thread, how about some nice good/bad or good/better examples from you? 

[nathanm]

I'll have to look for comparisions.  My rule is to try and only put good stuff out to the public eye and keep all the crap hidden.  (of course those who dislike your photos will think you only show crap anyway, but that's besides the point)  This is easier said than done a lot of times.  Like for instance one day I decided I hated every color photo I ever took.  I'm thinking, "Cripes, this is all postcard garbage!"  But then another day I might think, "Well, it's not that bad."  But you've got to be brutally honest with yourself, no matter if you're showing your photos to just friends and family or putting them on Flickr etc. for the whole world to see.  A well-edited selection makes a big difference.  Your family will thank you for it, too.  Especially in the age of easy digital proliferation.

Shooting 4x5 really puts the smack down on waste.  It's just too much friggin' WORK to not frame up a good shot.  When I do cock one up it's all the more painful.  It's even painful for me to bracket exposures in 4x5, if I've got 8 shots I want 8 unique images!  All the experimentation takes place before you shoot.  Like if I was shooting the cross\window scene, I would spend about 20 minutes finding the angle I wanted before taking the exposure.  You have to stand there and really think, "Is this a winner shot?  Do I even bother?"  And there's the possibility of saying "screw it" somewhere along the line.  With digital you can shoot a bunch of angles and find one you like, but now you've got all this waste laying around.  I'm not saying everyone does this, but I certainly have WAY too many GBs of junk in my Lightroom database.

Here's a photo which I can bring out of the trash as an example.  Unfortunately there's no "after" version.  The nice lonely tree butts up against the background woods, making the composition unbalanced and yucky.  So sure, the wiry branches give us nice detaily goodness; but like a Diana Krall CD, it may sound good but it's just so damn BORING!   The photo could have easily been fixed by simply moving the camera to the left enough so that there was white space buffering the tree and the dark wood area.  The distant snow and row of trees should have been the complete horizon.  Live and learn.  Now that I think of it though, there may have been a farmhouse on the right I was trying to avoid.  Hmmm.  In any case it leaves much to be desired.

[nathanm]

This lurid junker was from last Christmas at my cousin's place.  Just because there's a nice vivid sunset you think you have a good photo.  Well, you failed.  What kind of crappola is that?  The neighbor's house does not a good foreground make.  Solution: Curse your rotten luck because you know by the time you'll be able to drive to a clean vantage point the light will be gone. 

[BradJudy]

Thanks Nathan.

Your high standards for photography are clear and hopefully you don't gag too much watching the rest of us.    I expect few of the rest of us do it so purely for the art (I know I only get artistic on occasion). 

With my recent dabbling with 120 film, I definitely understand the desire to make each shot count and not waste the precious few frames.  I'm sure that many years of thinking that way hone the eye.