How I Create an Image
I would love to say I turn up to a location for the first time, snap the picture and walk away, done in 5-minutes? For me anyway, it doesn’t work like that.
The first stage is always ‘preparation’, I tend to have targets in mind, for the most part I research the location on the internet or in books and understand car parks, facilities, hiking or walking routes and distances etc... I also take a look at any available images and see how other photographers have approached the subject, not to copy them but in an effort to conjure up a different perspective. I then form a visualization of exactly what I would like in my image. The final image I create doesn’t always align to the vision by the way!
A recent example of creating an image happened only this week where my target was Bourton-on-the-Water, a beautiful Cotswold village. If at all possible, and certainly in this case, the second stage is a daytime ‘recce’, really just walking around searching for compositions and getting a feel for the place. It struck me that any photo of Bourton-on-the-Water required a few components; a lamp post, the river, a bench, a bridge or two and possibly some trees (only because they would be hard to avoid). During the recce I always check where the sun is going to be at different times of the day, I use the Photopills app, which is excellent for this. I managed to find a composition with most of my desired elements and knew that the photo had to be on a relatively clear day at sunrise. In my vision I also imagined snow and ice and even more wanted to show a contrast with some early morning glow, yes, I know I want everything.
The last, but certainly not least job was to check the weather for the coming mornings, I use the Ventusky app, which is a great weather app and easy to understand. Sure enough the next morning very early I managed to get up and drive to Bourton-on-the-Water arriving shortly before sunrise, it was freeeeezing.
The third stage of the process is to ‘capture’ the image and on arrival I went straight to my chosen composition and set up. It was still dark, but I managed to frame up my composition by slowing the shutter speed to lighten up the LCD screen on the back of the camera. Whilst it was still dark, I tried multiple variants, landscape, portrait, excluding elements, including elements, move closer or further away, up and down etc… Essentially, I was waiting for the light and after a good wait in the freezing cold, as you can see from the image, it came and lit up the willow tree.
A good tip when taking the image is to ensure the histogram is looing good, not crushing the shadows and not blowing the highlights. There are literally thousands of YouTube videos detailing how to use the histogram so check them out if you are interested. Beware that satisfying the histogram can lead to a fairly drab RAW file (scroll up to the first picture) but essentially all the detail is captured and postprocessing should fix any problems.
As you can see, I edited the image, ‘postprocessing’ is the final stage. In this particular edit I tried to emphasize the light reflected in the trees, lightened some of the shadows and saturated some of the colours, the job then was pretty much done. I have to say, I continuously return to edited photos to make refinements, a second look after a period away from the computer can really make a difference.
The last task is to decide if the image is ‘portfolio worthy’ or is merely to be consigned to the memory hard drive never to see the light of day. For me, this image is portfolio worthy, I would love to hear what you think.