If there's one thing that really puts me off doing landscape photography it is
the wind and it's extremely windy today so I thought would stay in the office
and give you some tips about how you can simplify your images and improve them
we're gonna talk a little bit about composition as well so Adam this is
first man photography let's go!!
one thing virtually all my workshop clients are
looking to improve on is composition and a good way to do that is to simplify
your image so I wanted to give you these five tips to help you do that. generally
speaking simplifying things is a good thing anyway and it's true in
photography as well but we're not really thinking about removing things from
images and making it a plain image, what we're actually talking about is
simplifying the story and to do that you first need to know what the story is
what are you trying to convey to the viewer? what emotions are you trying to
evoke? what is your story? that's where the art comes from that's where it
becomes your work and your experience of that landscape. Being in touch with your
feelings is an important part of this it's not always easy but it's definitely
worth giving it a try when we arrive at the scene the first thing we want to
think about is pretty much the stuff we talked about last week
what is your subject where is the good light what are the interesting things in
the scene in front of you. Once we've done that we're then starting to think about
composition it's here where we really want to start to try and simplify the
image now the first one just because I absolutely love it is to use long
exposure so we've got a few images here and this is the first one it's a image
of a small town on the west coast of Scotland called Glenelg and it's kind of
fairly isolated through this mountain road and the whole village has a feel
that people just do what they need to do to get by it has a slightly industrial
feel but it's also set in an absolutely beautiful landscape and that's the
emotion and the feeling I was trying to evoke there are a few things that are
working for this image to really make that story work and make it the image
work firstly it has leading lines of this jetty which just leads you nicely
up to the mountain in the middle there and that mountain is also kind of framed
by these ones beside that don't have quite as much
snow. Now, long exposure is what I've used here this is about two and a half
minutes I think what it does with the long exposure is just remove the detail
from the water and the sky and that just places focus back down into the jetty
and the mountain which is what the story is all about if we just flick over to a
the test exposure that I took you can see how that's working for you because
there's a lot more detail in the water it's quite smooth anyway and quite
interesting but that's just not what the story was about so I have simplified
that and removed that little hair that was on the sensor as well and it's just
made it's a much better image what I've also done in this image is to make it
black and white and that is another way an extra way that we can simplify our
images as well it doesn't mean every black and white image will simplify
because it's got to work for the image if we got back to this color image the
color is detracting from the story here because you've kind of got the Browns
and the the white and it isn't particularly colourful image but the
mornings that nice soft morning light has produced some beautiful tones in the
image and if you look at the light on the metal here and here and on the hills
as well and the reflections when you make that into black and white
it's just picked up those tones so beautifully and I just think it works
really well I've then added a blue toner as well and again that was to further
that story of that industrial cold winter's day feeling and that's why I
think that story works. Now the second way of simplifying our images is to use
negative space and all that is is a bit like this image here where you've got a
large amount of background and one color often that just puts all the emphasis
back on to the subject of your image and here the subject of my image
are these groins here. This is a Spurn Point which is on the east coast
of England it's very remote very isolated and a little bit neglected and
that's the sort of emotion I wanted to evoke here so I've again used a long
exposure as well and it's just created this sort of white area all around the
image here and then all that focus goes back on to these groins and you can see
how they're broken and tipping over and it just it gives that kind of feeling of
being a bit rejected and not looked after. Now the third way is to isolate
the subject this is a really important one because it's used in so much of
photography if you think about portrait photography we can do that by blowing
out the background and having a nice blurred bouquet background or we in the
studio setting we have a plain white grey or black background or a color one
it can also work in landscape photography and we can achieve it in
quite a few ways which include using a long lens to get those kind of intimate
shots right in onto the detail onto the subject but we can also do it by using
light and contrast and that's exactly what I've done in this shot here this
was taken on my journey you're a Welsh mountain as I was walking up and hiking
up the Sun came through a small gap in the mountain very momentarily and lit up
this tree and by lighting up the tree like it has done here
it's then I've managed to use the contrast the natural contrast in the
image to really make that subject stand out, isolate it against
the background. The light didn't last for long and when it went away this is what
the scene looked like so this is now just a very flat there's no contrast
there's no light on the tree and that tree just blends into that background
and the image is just completely lost and it doesn't work so the next one is
less is not always more in fact kind of contradictory but it's about simplifying
the image versus simplifying the story so let's have a look at this image that I
took in Glencoe so at the time when I put this video out
I couldn't decide whether I liked this image better or the image where I've
removed the road and you can see just the the road down in the bottom corner
here I've just cloned that out using Photoshop I actually think in this image
with the road removed the composition is slightly better and it works slightly
better however it's not simplifying the story. Although we've removed the road, made
the image more straightforward and simple,
it's complicated story it's done that by firstly pretty much
deceiving the viewer about the image because there is a road there it also
removes the hint of the location where I am in Glencoe and then most
importantly it just completely kills the scale of that shot because if we then
click back over to the road being there you can it just gives just a sheer scale
the story just works a lot better with the road there beautiful winter's day in
Glencoe gives scale to the mountain and that is so the story in that one. So this next one is a similar
sort of thing this is Roseberry topping in North Yorkshire a place that's very very
special to me and this image sort of shows what a beautiful summer's day it is
warm light and the composition works really well because we have this
leading line of the path just leading us around the scene up to Roseberry topping
and then if we follow this nice so a triangular shape up to the sun you get the
Sun setting as well and I think it just creates a feeling that you're there in
that quiet special moment. just to show an example of where removing things and
making the image have less in it, doesn't always work and all i've done just to
show that is just to crop out the heather at the bottom, its exactly the same
image just with that heather cropped out and immediately the story is lost
because with it could be any it could be spring now is it summer? it is it spring? we
don't know because we've lost that heather, we've also lost the leading line of the
path it's now a very distracting image because this is our subject up here the
lines kind of lead you over to the right-hand side here and this light
and is hitting the foreground here is just very distracting and your view just
does not naturally go up to Roseberry topping and it just doesn't work anywhere
near as well as having more detail in the image or color in the image and
that's all adding to it so although sometimes we say less is more but not
always the case because we're really talking about the story rather than
removing things from the image the next tip is to crop your images now cropping
is slightly controversial but I don't think it's necessarily wrong in all
cases and I'll give you an example of that here you hear a lot about getting
it right in camera I don't totally agree with that however I do agree with it
around composition because it's really difficult to change your composition in
post-processing other than cropping you can't change perspective you can't move
your position and as we saw in the video last week slightest of changes can
completely change the image but there are occasions if you have captured the
correct ingredients cropping will work and that results in a that image just
being quite good or it gives you an idea and a good
reason to revisit that scene and capture it with that new crop that you've
discovered when looking at it on the screen so this is a good example of that
and I've captured all the right ingredients but just haven't cropped it
correctly. Now I planned this shot for a long time and it paid off pretty much
but you see really most of the detail is in this area here and you've got
distracting elements here this bit is distracting here and all around the side
is distracting and then this bit of blue in the clouds at the top is also
slightly distracting so all I've done is cropped in pretty much from every side
of the image and this is the image it's created it's just a much better
composition and it gives the story a much better feel because it's all about
these cliffs leading you down the steepness down to this road that then
leads you up with the cliffs on either side to what is just a spectacular
spectacular sunset and the sky is literally on fire
so that's an example of where you can go through your old images and apply these
tips and essentially find an image in an image maybe you use that or maybe it's
just like I say a good reason to go back to that landscape and do it again but
try and improve the images you've got and then get out and try these these
tips for yourself in the field so yeah simplify your images I could
talk about this all day long check out my workshops please leave a
comment down below and let me know what you think subscribe to the channel hit
the like button do everything you need to do and I will see you on another one
very very soon I'm Adam this is first man photography
Out!!!