Is every photograph you take a work of art? I claim they are not. However, there are certainly photographs that are works of art. I have looked at the famous photographs of Ansel Adams and others from the golden age of photography who had the ability to capture, in an instant, an image that lasts forever. I once saw a display of Adams’ iconic image of “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico” with various versions of the photo developed by Adams over the years. Each image was slightly different, but each showed the haunting beauty of a New Mexico town cemetery with the moon lighting up the scene. Sometimes he dodged or burned the clouds and the light of the crosses in one way and other times in another, but he always gave beauty to the print.
While you or I may never take a photograph as good as Ansel Adams, we can all strive to capture light on camera and develop it in a way that touches the viewer’s heart. Our goal should be to take a photograph that provokes a visceral feeling in the viewer. So how do we turn a mother’s snapshot into a work of art?
A photograph begins long before you click the shutter.
I think you have to see the photograph in your mind before taking the camera out of the bag. You need to walk around the scene. Try to visualize the photograph, looking at the subject from different angles, positioning your point of view up and down, from kneeling on the ground to climbing a tree or a ladder. Move around the scene to see what’s in the background and foreground. Move fifty feet to the left or right to see if the image “pops up” in your field of vision.
Use other tools to help you set up the shot. I have an app on my iPhone that tells me when the moon will rise and set and the different phases of the moon. I often check this app, even before I go out, to determine the best day and/or time of day to shoot. I have another iPhone app that marks the waypoint (precise location) of my location. I use this landmark to encode the photo with longitude and latitude so that the exact spot I was standing on can be located later on Google Earth.
let there be light
It is commonly understood that there are only two good times of day to take pictures. These are the times around sunrise and sunset and are known as the “Golden Hour”. Some photographers cut that time down to about ten minutes of perfect light with the sun low on the horizon. You will often see a golden glow in photographs taken at these times of day. The scene and location will dictate when the light is perfect. If you are in a mountain canyon, the light may not hit the trees until later in the morning. You may need to wait for the light to hit a particular part of your scene or to illuminate specific parts of your scene, like the leaves on a tree.
Of course, some rules are made to be broken. Some of my best shots occurred when the sun came out from behind a cloud to light my scene.
Often times, the photo you think you took may look a little different when viewed on the big screen, and sometimes there’s something in the background or foreground that spoils the intended shot. However, from time to time, he may see some greatness that was not apparent in the viewfinder, but was captured in his image. I once took photos of a tennis match where the player was moving very fast while shooting on auto and I didn’t see, until later, that I had captured the tension in his face with bulging veins in his neck that seemed about to burst. . On closer inspection, I realized that it wasn’t the movement of the ball, but the intensity of the players swing coupled with the lines and the sweat on his face that created the magic in the image.
After visualizing your scene, proceed to take your camera out of your bag, set it on the tripod, set the shutter speed and f stop, and then release the shutter. And this is how you create a photograph that is much more than just a snapshot.
