The Goodman’s Blog: Lifelong Learning and Sharing

This composition technique is known as repetition. One object is sharply focused. Another object in the background is a repetition. I could have made the second flower sharp as well but I chose to have it blurred, to make the object on the foreground really stand out.

This is cropped from a larger photo. I wanted to guide the viewer’s immediate attention to the yellow stalks of this zinnia.

When people ask me to review their photos, I often find that they tend to take so many objects in one photograph. It was is if they head for a buffet table and pile as much food as they can on one plate.

One must learn that less is more.  Showing only one or two objects (but with one being more emphasised) makes a viewer’s eyes more focused on the object of attention.

I shot this in the early evening at Queen Sirikit Park, off Chatuchak in Bangkok. Fortunately for me, not too many people go there, so I had a lot of time moving around to find out which angle was best. I used a zoom lens. I intentionally blurred the backgrounds (black and green) by using aperture priority and a very wide aperture.

Note: when shooting close-ups of flowers and when you intend to have a large print (like 8 x 10 or larger), a tripod is critical.

It’s May! It’s May! The lusty month of May!

I was humming this song from the musical ”Camelot” when I was shooting flowers in Spain and France in springtime last year. I took over 10,000 shots in one month.

I normally use Adobe Photoshop for photo-editing. But when I was teaching newbies on photo-composition and editing, I decided to use Picasa which they could download for free.  The amazing thing was that it took me only two minutes (mainly to select some 35 photos) to create these two collages.

Don’t look down on free software. Sometimes they can do a better job than those used by pro’s.