How to create excellent photographic works

In the process of taking pictures, whenever I think of four elements: the direction of light, the principle of subtraction, the beautiful angle and the lens perspective. As long as I keep these four elements in mind, no matter what equipment I use, I can guarantee that I can shoot any object at any place and time and create excellent works.

Direction of lighting

Light is the most important aspect of photography. As a professional photographer, you should know everything about light. For example, how does light behave indoors and outdoors, how to distinguish its brightness and color, and how to strengthen, weaken and shape light. Anyone can take good photos-as long as they can understand and control the light as thoroughly as a real professional photographer.

When taking pictures, I always try to improve the light shining on the subject. Every time I shoot, I always carry four tools with me: a rectangular soft box about 1.8 meters, a five-in-one reflector, a flash and a photographic lamp. These photographic tools are generally used to improve the light of the subject and the direction of the light. I seldom let go of the light, because there is always a way to improve it anyway.

The photo of the groom on the right uses the window as the light source, which is also a common lighting technology. In this case, there is nothing wrong with this method of using light, but it can be further improved. At present, most of the groom's face is dark, and only the side facing the window has the right brightness.

Here we need to find a better angle to make the groom stand out from the background. You can add a reflector to the groom's side facing away from the window to reflect the light from the window to the dark part of his face (left). In this way, there is no need to modify photos in Photoshop, and the light quality is improved. By changing the direction of light, you can get a photo with perfect light.

Subtraction principle

"Simplicity is better than complexity" is the most appropriate wisdom of photography. Photography is a subtraction art, which requires the photographer to observe the scene at that time and make a choice.

Imagine taking pictures in a busy commercial street with hundreds of shops, pedestrians and crying children. With so many sensory stimuli, you may notice the light reflected from one building to another when you start looking for a shooting target. If you can't find good light, can you use a soft light plate, flash or reflector to create the right light? It is possible to find a scene with a good solid color somewhere on a busy street. Maybe two or three colors belong to the same color system or they all belong to the same color system. And how to find satisfactory geometric elements in the window frame?

Look around carefully, at least you can find some anchor points to try. If the geometric elements of the scene can arouse the interest of shooting, you can cut off other parts of the scene and focus only on the geometric shapes or other elements in the shooting plan. The purpose of this is to filter out other contents in the scene and focus on a small part that is interesting or worth shooting. Don't wait until you start taking money before trying this method. You can practice this skill of carefully choosing what you see every day.

Beautiful angle

People's faces are different, so it is impossible for a photographer to take pictures of everyone's faces with only one shooting scheme. Because different people have different facial skeletal structures, when light shines on everyone's face, it will show different effects. In fact, everyone can take beautiful personal photos, as long as they spend a little time studying his face carefully and choosing the most suitable angle and light.

Careful observation of the following two portraits shows that the time interval between the two photos is only a few minutes, which can explain how to find the right combination point of light and angle for a specific facial contour. Although the lady in both photos looks beautiful, it is obvious that the shooting angle of the second portrait is more suitable for her. Here are my steps to take these two portraits.

1. In my opinion, the first obvious facial feature of this lady is her charming eyes. This is also the basis of all the shooting work in the future. Once I find something that catches my eye, I will hold on to it. Photographers should make every decision according to the most prominent features of characters' looks.

2. I noticed that her face is a little round, so I'm going to cover the part of her face with my hair, which can weaken the circular outline of her face and make it look closer to an ellipse.

The last step is to turn her body, with her back to the light source and her face facing the light source. Here I have to make sure that her chin is down, but keep her eyes fixed on something slightly higher than her face.

Looking back at all the photos I have seen, from old family photos to holiday photos, about 95% of the photos were taken from the perspective of ordinary people, about 1.5 ~ 1.8 meters high. People's eyes are used to seeing the world from this angle, but such photos make people feel unremarkable. This is why people are particularly interested in those aerial photography books in bookstores. Even buildings that pass by every day will suddenly feel excited from a brand-new angle. Remember, the next time you shoot, look around and look for ways to present different perspectives. Keep this in mind during filming and keep asking yourself, "What will this scene look like from the perspective of a bird or a dog?"

We applied this method to a typical small outdoor wedding in Beverly Hills. At first glance, there is absolutely nothing magical about the wedding scene, and there is nothing eye-catching and worth shooting.

Lens perspective

In the process of portrait shooting, each shot will show different perspective effects of the subject. Shooting at a distance with a 200mm lens looks very different from shooting at a close distance with a 100mm lens. The cut may be the same, but the face of the person being photographed looks very different. Matching the lens correctly according to the required perspective effect depends on accumulating a lot of shooting experience every day.

I once helped a friend's wedding shoot. During the whole shooting process, this friend never changed the lens, which really shocked me. Every photo he took from beginning to end used a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens. If you just go home and finish shooting right away, it is a very good strategy to shoot with only one lens. To improve the shooting quality, you need to bring a lot of lenses, and then match the appropriate lenses according to the scene.

The environment and lens chosen for shooting these elements need to be perfectly matched. If you don't want to change and use an inappropriate lens, as the friend mentioned above did in the wedding shooting, then you may miss the best photos of your photography career.

For example, these two pictures were only taken with different lenses in a very short time. Geometric elements such as guiding lines formed by buildings look more exaggerated and vivid when photographed with a super wide-angle lens. The first photo was taken with a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens, which is why this photo was a complete failure. The second photo was taken at 16-35mm f/2.8 lens, which obviously matched the shooting environment perfectly.

The above pictures and texts are taken from Shooting Excellent Works-Deciphering the Collection Skills of Top Photographers in the World by People's Posts and Telecommunications Publishing House.