Do you find that your photos all look the same they don't stand out that much? they just look
a little bit boring but there's one really simple technique that'll get you out of this
beginner habit and if you follow this process I'm about to show you it'll help you get so
many more interesting photos if you're new to the channel my name is Mike Smith and I'm
a landscape photographer I do weekly videos giving you hints and tips on photography and
helping with your motivation so if you like what you see make sure to subscribe [Music]
when you're out taking photographs it's quite easy to look at a scene think it looks nice
take a photograph of it and move on and chances are if you think your photos are a little bit
boring this is probably what you're doing if this does sound like you all I want you to do
is think about wide medium and close up the next time you find a subject so let's have a look at
this scene in front of me if I was just to get a snapshot of it I'd just take a shot like this
and then move on and that's okay but if you do this throughout the whole day all of your shots
become very similar and similarity in a sequence of shots becomes boring very quickly [Music]
did this when I first started photography I didn't have a clue as to why I wasn't getting better well
at least the rate that I wanted to anyway and this was back in the 90s and YouTube didn't
exist then so it's the good old library to find any kind of information however when I started
using this mindset of wide medium and close-up my photographs really started to change so I
might get a shot like this which is very similar to what I took earlier on then I might put the
zoom lens on and start picking out things within that landscape so I might get a shot like this
which is a little bit tighter that's almost like a medium shot and then might get a shot like this
which is a close-up and I normally take around about three close-ups to every wide shot that
I take this is one of the things I love doing and if there's really nice light really far away
big zoom lens can really help and this will make your photographs so much more
interesting and it'll give a group of photographs a really nice story
now another thing is if you watch a lot of movies you'll probably see this pattern time
and time again they might start off with a wide establishing shot to show off the scene and then
they'll show you a medium shot and then some of the close-ups and sometimes they'll mix it up by
starting on a close-up and finishing on a wide but they will follow this technique of using a
wide a medium and a close-up I also did it with this video at the start I had a wider medium and
a close-up and I kind of mixed them up a little bit to try and keep you interested and keep the
video moving on with movies there's a reason why the Director of Photography is really important
and he's almost like the right hand man to the director and it's because that person
decides what the frame is going to look like and how visually interesting it's going to be
now the light is hitting the mountains behind me so I'm going to get a few shots of this
following this principle and I'll put them on screen to show you what I mean [Music]
I love it when the lights like this there's dappled light coming through there's just these
little pockets of light on the landscape it's making for really interesting scenes ah yeah
get that get that this is why I love coming out when the weather's like this you're not sure what
you're going to get sometimes you get absolutely nothing and other times you get really nice shots
[Music]
no matter what photography genre you shoot if you have this technique in mind you'll get much
more interesting photographs now I suppose it's a strategy more than a technique but you know what
I mean now you might be thinking well it's okay for you Mike you've got your big telephoto lens
on your camera and you can pick things out of that landscape but if you only have one lens you can
still take advantage of this well this definitely wasn't forecast big Squall has just come through
and even though I'm not soaked I had to put the camera away for now
I love the British weather so let's say I just had a prime lens a 35 millimeter I can still use this
principle to get some different shots with this one lens so we've got these Hills in the distance
I like the way that the light hitting them but with a 35 millimeter Prime I can't zoom in so
that's the only shot that I can get but then I can move my position to change that and get that
wide medium close-up principle working again so I've got this pile of rocks behind me might get
that in the foreground with those mountains in the background so I might do something
like that focus on the rocks in the foreground or we might even drop the aperture right down
and blur out that background [Music] or do the opposite blur out the foreground
and get that background in the shot also you might want to get actual close-ups so there's some rocks
in the foreground and also there's some Heather as well I've got a few different shots of those
with this lens so once again this is utilizing that wide medium and close-up principle there are
so many different applications to this strategy from using a zoom lens to moving with your feet
to getting a macro and a super wide shot so there's so many different things you can do
in just thinking about wide medium and close-up on the other hand you might just have a kit lens
but you can still use this strategy so I might get a wide shot like this then zoom in on the
details like this then get a medium shot like this you are a little bit more limited when you
just have a kit lens and this is why it's good to get a telephoto and a wider lens as well but if
you do just have the kit lens you can get really interesting shots with it to be honest any kind
of zoom lens helps and even though I love the quality that I get from prime lenses I love the
versatility of a zoom lens and this is why lenses with a wide range are great the 50 to 400 the 28
to 200 or the 24 to 105. these are all fantastic lenses and they'll give you such a great reach
and if landscape photography is your hobby and you've got to fit it in around your work you'll
probably be very limited with time and that's when a lens like this really comes in handy
[Music]
now this will help you get better photographs when you're out but what happens if you've
planned a day or you've planned a hike and that day comes around and that light's dull
and boring it's easy to sack it off and go and do something else but if you persevere and go
out anyway you'll learn so much more about your photography and your skills will go through the
roof and in this video I'll show you exactly how you can do this I'll see you next time