Improving Your Photographs

Improving Your Photographs

by William Lulow

Once you have attained a certain level of competence with the photographic process, you can then begin to look for ways that your images can be improved. In an earlier blog article, I talked about how to view and edit your own pictures. This is often hard to do because, after all, you made them. You know the extent of the time and work you put in to them and perhaps you think that you really can’t improve them any more than you already have. But, the process can actually be quite rewarding and it results in pushing yourself to become aware of the things that really make a photograph stand out from others. Here are some elements of really top-notch images:

1. Overall subject appeal
2. Composition
3. Photogenic elements
4. Lighting
5. Memorability
6. Print quality
7. Human interest
8. Timelessness
9. Beauty
10. Eye candy (people’s interest)

Some of these may be a bit redundant at times, but photographers need to know what kinds of images have some innate qualities that draw viewers’ eyes to them. Here are two images. Which one do you think has greater viewer appeal:

Why did you choose the one you did? What’s better about one than the other? 

Can you think of any photogenic qualities of these images?

What is there in each of these examples that would draw your interest or make them visually exciting to look at?

Here are some things that can make your images more visually exciting:

1. Composition: The image needs to appeal to my sense of what a good composition entails. It has to draw the viewer into the frame and have enough information to keep someone’s attention.
2. Tonal Values:  The image has to follow basic requirements of good Black&White images. There has to be detail in the highlights as well as in the shadows and has to have one spot of pure white and one of pure black.
3. Subject matter:  The image has to be visually interesting. Either the action or the subject matter needs to have qualities that would make people interested in viewing it.
4. Visual interest:  The image, because of all the above aspects, really needs to be interesting to look at. 
5. Lighting: It almost goes without saying that light is a major factor in the making of photographs. By definition, they are “light images,” so the lighting is of paramount importance.

So, all the factors listed here and my gut feelings about having made the image in the first place, go into deciding if I want to print it and exactly how I would print it for some kind of impact. I actually thought about making a collection of some of the Black&White images all printed on the same page to see if they were all compelling to view:

Here are the ones I chose and I will attempt to explain what stands out to me in each one and why I would pick one over the other to print to hang in a show, for example.

The top one on the left is of a barn in Western Massachusetts. I worked on the tones of the trees both in back and in the front of the barn to try and make them stand out. The luminance of the barn itself is what interested me so I tried to separate those tones from the surrounding foliage. The dark sky and whole tone made me think it looked like an infrared shot, which often makes trees appear white. The leading lines in the composition also make the image a strong one. All in all, this is one I wanted to print.

The one below it is of a town square in Bellagio, Italy. I was interested in how the two pillars in the foreground kind of separated the square’s cobble stones from the background buildings. This image took some work to lighten up some of the shadows to make the entire picture more visable and “read” more clearly. My thoughts are that the composition overall, is not as strong as it might be, but it is a couple of steps above just a normal snap shot.

The image of Grand Teton with the Snake River in the foreground is an attempt to copy a picture by Ansel Adams made in 1942 from roughly the same spot. Of course,  a physical place looks very different after 70 years. Trees have grown and other things are in the way of finding the exact same location. This is why given all things equal, no two photographers will get the same photograph even if it was taken as an exact duplicate. It becomes a whole different image in the hands of a different photographer. Settings are different, technique is different. Earlier images were made on continuous tone film rather than digitally. All these things make each photographer’s efforts different.

The last one of the four was made on a narrow street right off Lake Como, Italy. The composition makes the narrow street stand out because the only light is at the end. But there is enough to light up most of the buildings and give a flavor of exactly what it’s like walking past scenes like this which are really all over Europe.

The Black&White renditions are also reminiscent of early photographs made with film, paper and chemicals. They try to elicit a special feeling that I have always had for monochrome images because they are what I fell in love with about the photographic process when I was just learning how to develop film and make prints. These are attempts to recreate some of my early images. The difference is that they are so much easier to create digitally. But they still take a lot of effort to perfect.