What Do I Look for in My Photographs?
Whenever I decide to take pictures of something (mainly flowers) I tend to factor in what I want out of it and how I look at it. It depends on the weather of course, but also whether I’m able to really get a good shot or not, if it looks like how I’m picturing it in my head or if the sun is hitting it just right. For example, if I want to take pictures of some flowers, I whip out my phone and start setting up the shot. I mess with my “pro” settings and see how well the subject looks in the frame. Since I mainly post my pictures on Instagram and or Twitter, I use a specific ratio. But other than that, I position myself accordingly and see how well the sun is hitting the flower, if I change my position will I be able to get a different angle of the sun hitting the flower. My phone doesn’t have the best settings to deal with the shot if it’s too bright or too dark, so I have to mess with the settings to make the brightness JUST enough to make it acceptable (to me.) If it’s passable I’ll take the shot, I’ll take a few, change positions a few more times, then finish. Nothing super crazy, but after I’m done taking pictures, I hope that I was able to adjust the focus well enough for the subject to be -the- focus. I take a look at my photo’s after and see which is good, which is bad or which ones just suck. Maybe they all suck!
In this particular photo, the sun was shining brightly and really highlighting the white color of the flowers, even hitting some of them! It felt nice, it felt like a dream, a comforting feeling in a way. Almost as if you were laying under the flowers and relaxing. I had to get moderately close so I could capture the specific idea I had in my head!
When it comes to editing, I don’t have any programs. Not right now anyways, but I do very minimal editing. I’ll raise the sharpness a little bit and mess with the definition as well. Do I know what definition means? Course not, but I can tell it does change my picture a little bit. I don’t want to edit my pictures too much, not because I don’t have any programs, but I like to think that I do well enough to capture what’s literally in front of me. If the sun is beaming on some flowers, and I’m absolutely amazed by how it looks, I want to capture it JUST like that to the best of my ability. I don’t want to just take a picture and then spend a bazillion hours editing them. I mean, I think it’s inevitable that I will spend a lot of time editing photos at some point, but for right now I try and capture the moment the way I see it, and damn I do a good job sometimes. Sometimes I make them my backgrounds! As for how I do the shots, I like a lot of close ups.
Since my favorite things to photograph are flowers, I like to do a lot of close-up shops. Close-up shots almost guarantee that they’ll be the center and forefront of the shot. They make the most sense to me, at least with flowers, because regular shots don’t capture enough of the details and small little intricacies that flowers have. With the petals, the stems, etc. Regular wide shots of course are great for capturing a flower field or similar instances, but close-up shots of flowers, to me… I mean, they’re just super nice. Especially when the sun hits them during golden hour, or the light from the sun is piercing through foliage and strips of light hit the flower petals, making them glow and stand out. It makes them look more eloquent, beautiful, sharp, and dreamy. And that’s what a lot of my flower photos are, or I try to capture that feeling, like you’re in a dream looking at them, as if you’re experiencing it, or feeling calm or nostalgic. I like photos like that, and I think for now, at least for myself, I’m doing alright!
I honestly feel like this is my best photo, and like a representation in a way of what I want my pictures to be like and feel like. The way I look at things. I walk into my kitchen, golden hour was peering through the window and hitting the rose. I HAD to take pictures. They looked beautiful.
I’m not gonna sit here and pretend I know the details and specifics about photography, I know someone who’s better at that than me. But I hope that I can understand the feeling that, quite possibly, every photographer has. That feeling of wanting to capture the world the way they see it. When you think about it, it’s pretty nice. I can’t really describe my train of thought well enough, but I hope my pictures give you a better idea. Hopefully I’ll get better at explaining. I’ll be posting more pictures soon, I wanna take more pictures at different places as well. I like flowers and nature a lot, but I like variety as well. Until then…
Later~
