Take Your Best Shot

6 Take Your Photography to the Next Level

Sundance RoseBackground is critical to the image. It took some effort to find the right focal length and position from which to photograph that would show the rose against only the colorful rock in the background.

Bluffs and BushWhile full sun produces harsh shadows, images taken in flat lighting need considerable editing to restore the three-dimensional effect and to separate layers within the scene.

Introduction

There is a fundamental flaw in the way most of us work toward improving as photographers. We practice what we’re good at and we largely ignore the things at which we aren’t skilled. For most of us, this means many hours spent agonizing over technical issues (sometimes not even the right ones), while mostly ignoring the aesthetic. It was this premise that spurred me to write many of my essays, but ultimately it was the following three essays found in this final chapter that caused Rocky Nook to contact me and suggest the idea of this book. While the book is focused on the nontechnical side of photography, the three articles that follow here also discuss technical problems. We elected to include those parts, since technical failures are every bit as frustrating. A bad picture is bad regardless of the reasons, and my goal is to help ...