I have been lucky enough to travel all over the world. I’ve seen some beautiful cities, and some incredible landscapes. The photographs that I take for this blog hopefully show you some of the amazing things that I’ve seen. For me, the photography is functional. It fills the holes in the blog, and better illustrates the things I’m telling you about. But I know that photography can be so much more.
Even in this digital age, images, pictures and photographs are really important. We can video call almost anywhere at any time, but most of us like to post still images to demonstrate our points. Most of us also have printed copies of our favourite photos on show at home. They might be on display in fabulous sterling silver photo frames to show off our best moments. This is despite having almost limited cloud storage space for all the images we might capture in a lifetime.
Photos are important. It’s not just about home decor or illustrating an idea. Looking at a picture gives us time to think about what’s there in the image. This has led me to explore some ways to create better pictures – after all, I’ve decided that I’m going to be doing more traveling and and ticking things off my bucket list.
A lot of my pictures have been taken with my iPad or smartphone camera apps. That works pretty well most of the time. But if you look at some of the better photography on Pinterest or Flickr, you’ll see that they’ve been taken with proper SLR cameras.
It’s true they can give you more control of the image. You can buy filters to put over the lenses, and you can adjust the focus and aperture more finely. This leads to a better quality of the image.
The next thing to consider is the composition of the shot. I’ve read about the rule of thirds. Dividing your image into three sections can be quite effective. It feels more pleasing to the eye to see three clear areas in the photograph too.
I’ve tried it out, and it does seem to be true. With portrait photograph, you want to create different depths and heights in the frame too. This gives the overall image more structure and interest.
I’m sure many of my photos that I’ll post on the blog will continue to be landscapes of interesting places I’ve visited. But I’ll keep on trying to improve my portrait photography skills. I want to put a great family pic in that photo frame every season.
What will you photograph today?