every weekend I go to the Eastern townships to work on my father’s farm and so I am around wildlife and nature most of the time. I decided that since I go there I should take some pictures of wildlife and landscapes. Taking pictures of wildlife was the hardest thing to do not just the technical aspect but just finding the animals, especial at this time of year. I decided to just to stick with landscapes as my major point of this project.
There are two photographers that I decided to study and look at their work and techniques. These two photographers are Michael Potts and Michael Reichmann. Unfortunately I could not find much on Potts techniques but I looked at some of his pictures and tried to imitate his technique, which was not easy to do. I noticed that when he does landscapes he tries to make it look like the landscape goes on forever. I wanted to try to accomplish this look but it was hard to do because there where so many trees. Although, even with this problem I believe that in some of my pictures I have accomplished that. There is a picture called Autumn Maples in his gallery, where he toke pictures of the branches and the leaves of the maple trees. In my project you will notice three pictures where I tried to do the same. In most of my photos I tried to apply the techniques listed below but in some of my photos I had to try my own techniques. Techniques:
- Fall Pictures: According to Reichmann, A good way to take fall pictures is to work with the composition. To get nice pictures you must try to get part of the photo with fall colors (Leaves) and the other with less or even no color to give it some contrast. By doing this the color from the leaves show up more (this can be seen in his picture called Rolling Fields). He toke his pictures of fall when there was very little sun light. He did this to bring out the color of the leaves with a contrast of treeswithout leaves. Unfortunately for my fall pictures there was too much sun light but still I believe that they still made nice pictures.
- Landscapes: As my project is to take pictures of landscape I did some research and found some techniques that became very helpful. To get nice landscape pictures you need to use a small aperture, which was very hard to do with my small digital camera. This is done to try and help keep everything in focus. Another great tip was to make sure there was something in the background of the picture to help bring some depth into it. The last and most important is to try and take your pictures in the morning and in the evening. This is done to bring the shadows out which is caused by the sun rising and setting.
Slideshow: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7TplvkCnqo
