The Three Things Guaranteed To Make  Awesome Photos

What are the three most important things you need to think about to create awesome photos.

I guess if you ask 10 different photographers what they think makes a great photo, you’ll probably get 10 different answers. But let’s have a look at some of the things that I think makes a great photo. There are a number of things that you need to think about. Things like the correct exposure, getting a photo in sharp focus, the depth of field, the focal length choice, but those sorts of things will just get you a photo that is technically correct. It doesn’t make a great photo. What else do we think about? We think about a photo that tells a story. We think about having an interesting subject. We think about the lighting, the different viewpoints, timing, something unusual, and composition.

As I say, if you ask 10 different photographers, they’ll probably have some of those things. They’ll probably have some of their own. What do I think is the most important thing that makes a photo great photo? Well, it’s a bit like the old saying when you’re buying a house, what do you look for? Location, location, location. In my mind what makes a great photo? Composition, composition, and composition

Looking at a few examples, of how a slightly different composition can make a much more interesting photo. This is a photo shot up in the Lake District. I forget exactly which lake it was on. It’s not a bad photo. The lighting is a little bit dull, but you know that was the day we got. We’ve got a little boat in the picture here, but overall it’s not a great photo

If we just have another look at one on a different lake and see how it’s different. Here we can see the composition is much stronger. We can see the horizon’s lower down, whereas previously it was in the middle of the picture. We’ve got a subject here on the right hand side of the picture. If you’ve heard of the rule of thirds that’s using the rule of thirds, and we’ve been quite fortunate, we’ve got a dramatic sky.

Taking another example, this is a waterfall. Again it’s a fairly average shot of a waterfall, it’s the sort of shot that a lot of photographers would take. How can we make it a bit different?

this is a different waterfall and you can see I’ve gone in closer, the foreground is chopped off at the bottom here. The waterfall is now on the right hand third, which works better than the left hand third. We got a bit of a leading line here on the water line on the rocks. Again, great compositional techniques.

One more example, shot with a stately home. Again, not a bad photo, we’ve got a bit of interest in the sky, but it’s all a bit central and a bit ordinary and it’s just a typical shot that most people take. What could we do to make a more interesting shot?

This is a double shot of a stately home, but what I’ve done here is I photographed the reflection of the stately home in the moat that goes round these. Then I flipped the image out right way, so you’d know it was the stately home, but you’ve got these really paintly effect caused by all the ripples in the water.

Those are the things that I think makes a great photo. There’s lots of different compositional techniques that you can use. I hope you found this episode useful.

You can find out more about this concept and many more tips to help you capture awesome photos in my course How to Capture Great Photos – Made Simple which contains over 2½ hours of video with loads of examples.

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