Change the Light Create A Story

Change the Lighting

Take an ordinary shot and change the lighting and it can become something totally different than you had imagined.

When I was shooting this sculpture it looked like the this fellow with the ball in his hand could have been a boy back in Roman times.  The headband and the long hair flowing off his shoulders left this impression.

Create a Story with Your Image

Change the Light

It is a sculpture about Pizza.  Pizza takes ones mind to Rome.  It does doesn’t it?

Not that Peter Piper Pizza (which is where this statue is located) bring to mind a great pizza dynasty. . .   From this angle I saw something different.  I saw a young boy coming home from a game of something with a ball on the day of the great volcano, the day Pompeii was buried under lava and ash.

I know the architecture doesn’t remind you of Rome.  I would need to brush the buildings out of the scene like I did the lunch posters in the windows behind him.  But the sky with those heavy clouds looked almost volcanic.

Tweaking the color balance a little at a time and trying a few different things with the histogram and it wasn’t long I had the look I was after for the background.

If I wanted to spend even more time with it, I would put the one image over the other and keep the boy looking like a metal head and put the volcanic sky and background in around him.

There are lots of ways I could change this image and create a totally new look and feel.

But back to the beginning.  It all is possible by changing the angle of the shot.  Nothing creative is gained or expressed by simply walking up to and around the subject while shooting from the standing position.

Get some rhythm going, move at your waist, bend your knees, don’t be afraid to get the seat of your pants dirty.  It isn’t about being clean and neat, it is about using the amazing camera support you have in your body to GET THE SHOT.

Tags: Change the Light, Create a Story

A $10,000 Tripod for Your Camera

Change the Perspective Get the Shot

Change the Angle

I’m going to get right to the point here.  You can take some amazing photos if you learn to bend your knees and turn at the waist.  If you will simply approach the subject from anything other than a standing, sitting, or kneeling position.

By presenting the subject from an angle that most people will never see you capture the subject in a new way.  This is true of historic or often photographed locations or iconic buildings.

You have this amazing ability to bend, stoop, squat, or lie on the ground and get a perspective that unless the viewer has done the same have never seen.

These unique captures don’t require a $1000 tripod with extension tubes.  They do require you the photographer, the one in charge of directing the shot to be creative.  You might have a point and shoot camera, but you don’t have to photograph like a point and shoot photographer.

Change the angle, you will be amazed at the comments your work will get.

Tags: Change Light, Change Perspective, Create a Story