This article appeared in August issue of Terrascape, a travel magazine for which I am an editorial consultant and also write a column on photography. Read all the earlier earlier travel photography articles on India Travel Blog.

Anyone who is serious about making good images would spend a lot of time working on the composition thinking about various angles, elevations, what to include and what not to include in the frame and many other aspects that define a photograph. While a lot of thinking and observation do work in favour of making good and distinct composition, sometimes very simple frames can create plenty of drama in the picture. Here is a look at the power of simplicity in making eye-catching images.

Just one subject. A frame that has just one attractive subject and not a thing else—no clutter in the background and nothing else in the foreground—can help highlight the subject dramatically. Some examples: a beautiful white flower with completely dark background, portrait of a person, bird or animal with uniform background that contrasts the colour of the subject, etc. Do keep in mind that it is important in such cases that the subject be charming in itself. A colourful bird or a beautiful flower has the power of attracting the viewer with ease.

Small aberrations. A uniform frame with one small distraction will immediately catch the eye of the viewer. It could be the image of a small hillock in an otherwise plain territory, a small colourful boat in the calm blue lake or a person wearing colourful clothes in a lush green field. In all these cases, the background colour and texture help highlight the subject very well and immediately attract the attention of the viewer to the subject, even if it occupies a small portion of the frame.

Go Black and White. In some occasions, converting to black and white can help in making simplistic images. Use this technique when the colour of the subject itself is not important, but the surroundings have bright colours that may unnecessarily distract he viewer away from the subject.

Minimalism. Minimalism can perhaps be defined as simplicity taken to the extreme. A picture that may comprise of just a few lines that catch the viewers interest, shapes that have very little complexity in them but present a uniformity that is attractive (such as the towers of a temple, ridges of a mountain), a small portion in an image that offers very high contrast from rest of the frame are some examples of minimalism.

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This article appeared in June issue of Terrascape, a travel magazine for which I am an editorial consultant and also write a column on photography. Read all the earlier earlier travel photography articles on India Travel Blog.

The tiny light emitting device located on the top of most cameras can be of great use in occasions when natural light is not favourable to us. Most of us generously use the flash after dark, be it indoors or outdoors. But a camera flash can make or break your photographs depending on the way it used. Here are some insights on making the best use of camera flash.

Where to use flash. The use of flash need not be limited only to situations of darkness or places where there is not sufficient light for the camera. It can be productive to use flashes even in mid-day. When you have strong and direct light, the subject can cast dark shadows in places that may appear completely dark in the photograph. Such shadows may often look ugly, especially when shooting people in strong mid-day sun when the eyes tend to be in a shadow. This can be countered by firing your flash, which can slightly brighten the areas in shadow and allow details in those parts to come out better in the picture. When the camera flash is used in this way to fill up the shadows, it is usually called ‘fill light.’

The problems with on-camera flash. When you use the flash to photograph people in low-light, it becomes the cause of the same problem as in the case of direct light mentioned in previous paragraph. The flash becomes a strong and direct light source and casts harsh shadows. When you photograph a person’s face, you may see a ring of darkness around the face in the area where the flashlight gets blocked by the person’s face. A flash can also spoil the mood and ambience of the place where it is predominantly lit by warm, tungsten lighting. The flash light is white in colour and corrupts the warm lighting in the room. If your camera permits, try to shoot with a higher ISO in the range of ISO 400 to ISO 1200 instead of using flash. This helps preserve the mood created by ambient light and prevents formation of dark shadows.

This photograph was taken on a sunny day, with these people sitting under the shade of the tree. There was some strong sunlight filtering from through the tree and their faces were lit nonuniformly. Without a flash, the areas under shadow would have appeared very dark. However, an external flash used as fill light helped light up all the areas uniformly.

Effective use of flash. An external flash can make a sea-difference to your pictures when compared to on-camera flash. The flexible design of external flashes allows you to change the direction of flash light, and where the environment permits, let’s you bounce the light from a roof or wall instead of emitting strong and direct light on the subject. An even better way to use a flash is by firing it off the camera using a remote trigger or a chord that connects the camera with your external flash. This gives you greater control on the direction of incident light.

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• Travel Photography: Power of Simplicity
• Travel Photography: Black and White Images
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This article appeared in May issue of Terrascape, a travel magazine for which I am an editorial consultant and also write a column on photography. Read all the earlier earlier travel photography articles on India Travel Blog.

Coming across some works from the masters, you might have wondered how black and white images make an impression stronger than colour photographs. Made well, black and white images can effectively tell a story and evocatively convey moods not seen in colour images. However, not every subject may be suitable for capturing in black and white. Here is a guide to decide when to go for making greyscale images instead of colour and how to make an image that leaves a lasting impression.

Choosing B&W or Colour. Colour images can work very well in most occasions. This is especially true in case of beautiful landscapes, outdoor nature and man-made subjects where colour is an important factor in making an image. A brightly painted truck with plenty of artwork may not be a great subject for creating black and white image. So is golden light of the evening sun on a mountain. Choose to go for black and white when colour in the subject itself is not important, but you are trying to convey a mood, a story or an action related to your subject. In such images, splash of colours can be counterproductive as they can take away the attention of the viewers. A good example is a portrait of an elderly person, where you are trying to highlight the wrinkles on his face but you are not very interested in the colours of his clothes or headgear.

Choice of Subjects. Black and Whites work well in photographing portraits of people, people at work and in documenting an action or a process. It would also work well in relatively darker environments where colours can’t be highlighted, high-contrast situations and in places that have an old-world feeling. A roadside chai shop, construction work or industrial activities, bustling markets in narrow lanes are some good examples. Landscapes, open spaces with boulder-strewn stretches can become good B&W subjects if you are shooting them in the middle of the day when strong sun creates a high contrast.

Processing for B&W. A decade ago, processing black and white images was a dark room activity which required some specialization and understanding the process of working with several chemicals in right proportion. Fortunately, it is much easier today. While converting to greyscale or desaturating the image in your computer is the simplest way to convert an image to B&W, this normally creates an unappealing low-contrast image. Use more advanced processing techniques such as ‘Channel Mixer’ in Adobe Photoshop, where you have a greater control in deciding how the final image should appear. In most cases, it helps to increase the contrast to a very high level before converting the image to B&W.

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This article appeared in April issue of Terrascape, a travel magazine for which I am an editorial consultant and also write a column on photography. Read all the earlier earlier travel photography articles on India Travel Blog.

Light plays an important role in photographing any subjects, be it outdoor or indoor. While one has to wait for the right time to get good light when shooting outdoors, the importance of quality of light has resulted in creation thousands of commercially available lighting equipment for indoor photography. In this edition of photography tips, let’s look at understanding how different type of lighting affects the quality of an image. Each type of light has its own advantages and disadvantages. Photographers must carefully assess the subject and the lighting before taking a picture.

Harsh and direct light. This type of lighting usually occurs during mid-day, when the sun is strong. Harsh, direct light creates strong shadows. Since the difference in brightness between directly lit areas and shadows are very high, most cameras will not be able to capture the details in both parts of the frame. This often results in areas in the shadow becoming very dark, or the lit areas becoming excessively bright.

Harsh lighting

Diffused light. Diffused light occurs on overcast days when the sun is hidden by clouds. This allows uniform lighting all around the subject, since sun rays do not hit the subject directly. Impact of shadow is minimal or does not exist. Colours get recorded with greater fidelity in such lighting. However, lack of contrast also means that the depth in the subject will not be apparent in the two-dimensional image.

Foggy days are an extreme case of diffused light, in which you don’t see much of the details on the object’s surface. Such light is useful when the subject has interesting contours.

Diffused light on an overcast day. Notice how the tree at the center of the image barely casts a shadow.

Backlight. Backlighting occurs when the subject lies between the camera and the light source. As the light falls on the surface of the subject that is not facing the camera, the camera sees the shadow of the subject and not the details. The background, where the light source is, will be much brighter than the subject itself. Such lighting creates silhouettes and the details in the subject will not be visible. This is not a suitable lighting condition in most cases, unless the contour or shape of the subject is more important than the details in the subject.

backlight produces silhouettes.

Sidelight. This is a lighting situation in which the light incident on the subject is perpendicular to the axis of the camera lens. In outdoor conditions, this happens in morning and evening hours, when the intensity of light is also not harsh. Side-lit objects have more brightness on one side and fades gently on the opposite side. This usually creates variation in lighting the subject, which helps show its depth. In case of morning and evening sun, the quality of light is also soft, which casts gentle shadows unlike the harsh afternoon light.

sidelight is apparent here in the pillars as well as the boulders.

Multiple light sources. Using multiple light sources help in eliminating some problems occurring with just one light. For example, afternoon light tends to cause dark shadows around the eyes (as the eyes are located in a depression), which can be countered using a flash light incident on the person’s face. While studios use a variety of light sources together to achieve desirable effects, this can be used with limited capability for subjects close to the camera when shooting outdoor.

Complex subjects like this require multiple light sources to ensure that no part of the frame is excessively bright or dark.

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Related Posts

• Travel Photography: Power of Simplicity
• Travel Photography: Using Flash
• Travel Photography: Black and White Images
• Travel Photography: Photographing Monuments
• Travel Photography: Photographing in low-light conditions