This photo has been shot in Cyprus, more than five years ago. Little did I know about photography becoming my biggest hobby. You may wonder why I chose this very photograph to become the title for Koloury, well, it is because it has a special story. And we have to go back all to the beginning…
Let’s start with the settings of the camera. The photo was shot on my former camera, a Canon EOS 70D system (from 2013) which was equipped with my first lense, Canon’s EF-S 17-85 f/4-5.6 USM. So, I knew that this „EF-S“ thing would have something to do with my APS-C sensor, but I did not dive into any detail. I can’t imagine I even did not know the difference between full frame and APS-C, which made my choice for the 70D even more random. After getting the camera body I had to choose a lense; I read some articles about the kit lenses and that they do not fit the needs of 2013’s photo-graphy, so I bought another lense, the above mentioned 17-85. I did not know that f/4-5.6 would be okay for landscape (you’ll use more closed aperture in landscapes anyway) and I was not aware that a focal length of 17mm would cause a significant distortion in my photos. Moreover, I paid way to much for the lense, every used lense would have done the job. Now I know that also the kit lense would’ve been the perfect entry into the world of DSLR photography, they are not too bad at all. Let me know if there’s more interest in the whole „buy-your-first-camera-story“ and I’ll write a lot more about it.
Knowing that I was not aware of my equipment’s capabilities, you might guess that this picture is a random shot as well and turned out great when looking at it on the screen back home. Well, you are partially right. The settings you find above are more or less randomly chosen as I had a rough idea of ISO and I knew that you should not turn up ISO during daytime (again: this is past view, we all know high ISO might be useful in many situations or even necessary in some), but I let the camera choose shutter speed and aperture. The reason I went for 24 mm and not for fully zoomed-out 17mm was simple: I learned from my first photos in New York City that the lense’s distortion would very much destroy the photo if you need clear lines and powerful contrasts. So I zoomed in slightly. As I did not know anything about shooting in RAW and developing photos in software like Lightroom or Luminar, this picture is absolutely not edited at all, except for the resize-procedure to be posted in this blog. And this is something very special that many photographers do forget during their journey for perfection:
Editing of photographs is part of our art. But it is our responsibility to keep the nature of things. So this is the critical part: learn to decide whether editing makes sense or it doesn’t.
For instance, I love the editing process in Adobe Lightroom. It literally gives me the opportunity to recreate pictures from my mind by editing the photos I took. But I am convinced that editing is the last, really the last part of your photographical journey. So, let’s come back to the photo this articel used to be about somewhere above…
Obviously, there are things I would do differently today. Of course there are! I mean, honestly, how many things of your past, concerning your hobbies, sports or job, have been that perfect you wouldn’t change a thing? Exactly. So, get it. Yes, you will look at some old photos and think „why didn’t I do better?“. Instead, you should think „wow. I improved a lot ever since.“ or things like „although I knew less than today, I did a good job.“. But to give you an idea how useful this re-thinking of photo composition can be, we’ll dive into my ideas for this photo if I shot it today.
The easy problem would be with A. This damaged part of the ground could have been easily fixed with an editing tool and would give the picture a „cleaner“ look. The harder problem is with B – because this is a problem with the composition. I love this picture, it is by far one of the photos that inspired me for my photography style. But today and also for sharing with you out there, I would go back for 17 mm focal length and correct the optical distortion via software. This would give me the chance to picture the whole shadow of the yellow railing on the ground which would perfectly match the rich contrast of the photo.
But there’s also things I would do exactly the same way I did them more than five years ago: the basic composition, the clear lines and strong contrast between the water and the railing as well as the balancing grey ground. Also, I love that roughly a third of the picture is grey and two thirds are covered by coloured elements.
See, there’s alsways more to learn. Let’s see what’s next. See you around. Stay creative and collaborative.
-Koloury-