Photography 101: Content in Digital Photography

Even with good techniques and composition, without content digital photography loses its substance. It is important to think of the content when you photograph something.

by Kelly Paal

Even if you feel that you already know what kind of digital photography you like to do, it’s always a good idea to try your talent at different aspects of digital photography.

Pictorial
This is a general term but it applies to any digital photographer who’s goal is simply to create beautiful photos. This breaks down into smaller subsets but the most popular form is landscape and nature digital photography. This is what I do and it’s tempting to go on and on but I will just say that this form of digital photography, to me, is a real art. At least that is goal to create art in photographic form. It is the goal of the digital photographer to use their abilities to capture an image in it’s moment of beauty and simplicity.

Portrait
This can be people and even animals. It also includes wedding photography as well. This is an aspect of digital photography that can be a lot harder than it seems. Not only do you have to know your basic photo composition but you need to understand what makes each person look their best. You must know how to bring out their personality and character in the shot. If you love working with people this may be your field. It’s fun and challenging.

Photojournalism
Now this isn’t just press photography, though that is one aspect of it. It is also documentary photography as well, the latter doesn’t always need an event to occur right in front of you. Either way the purpose is to tell a story. Really good photojournalism shouldn’t need the text below it to tell you what is going on. It should be compelling and storytelling. Composition still plays a part in digital photography, you can’t tell a story if the story can’t be seen. And while these digital photos can be beautiful in their technical aspects they aren’t necessarily beautiful images. The story telling is as important.

Abstract
Probably not as common of a form of digital photography but I’m seeing it more and more. This is usually characterized by extreme close ups of detail of something, so much so that you can’t identify the original subject. But in this case that doesn’t matter since the abstract detail or pattern is the subject of the digital photo. (Color can also be the subject as well.) Basic composition still plays a part, maybe a bigger part in this form of digital photography.


About the Author: Kelly Paal is a freelance nature and landscape photographer, exhibiting nationally and internationally. Recently she started her own business Kelly Paal Photography. She has an educational background in photography, business, and commercial art. She enjoys applying graphic design and photography principles to her web design.

Photography Tips - Portrait Photos

Portrait photography is an important aspect of photography in general. High quality portrait photos are impressive projections of emotions and feelings, and captures the objects' character forever. This article will provide you with guidelines for achieving such high quality portrait photos.

Although producing true high quality portrait photos is an art and requires experimentation and experience, there are some simple general techniques that you can follow in order to quickly improve your portrait photos. Here are a few:

Background: A good portrait photo, or for that matter any photo in which a person is the center of attention, should have a passive background that does not take the attention away from the object. Specifically a portrait photo is all about the objects face. Take your photos in a neutral background. A background that is comprised of soft solid colors is an example of a good background to use. A busy street or people moving around are examples of bad backgrounds to use in portrait photos.

Blurring: Another way to focus the viewer's attention on the object and not the background is to blur the background details. Blurring the background will literally lift the object out of the photo and make it stand out. The technique to blue the background is pretty simple you will need to set your camera to a shallow depth of field. You can do that by using a zoom lens and shooting from a short distance or with a wide aperture manual setting.

Lighting: Lighting is a simple but important issue in portrait photography. Natural lighting is preferable whenever possible. Natural light is much better at capturing the full color range and warmth of the skin than artificial lighting. Try taking portrait photos outdoors during the day. Position the subject in such a way that sunlight hits them from an angle and not directly. Taking photos with the sun behind the subject will result in a silhouette. On the other hand, taking photos with the sun right in front of the subject will result in overexposure and color distortion. You can use a fill-in flash to compensate for some shadowing that might occur on the face, especially in the nose area.

The eyes: Although a face has many details - nose, eyes, mouth, and so on - the eyes are the overwhelmingly important feature to focus on in a portrait photo. The eyes tell a story and they convey emotions, feelings and state of mind. Focusing on them will make the photo better project all those feelings. Depending on the emotions and story that you are trying to convey through the photo, guide your object to look straight to the camera or to look sideways by focusing on another object.

Experiment: It takes time and experience to perfect your portrait shooting abilities. With digital cameras the cost of taking photos is literally zero, thereby allowing you to experiment extensively until you get a good sense of how to produce high quality portrait photos.