Great Photos Don't Require Crazy Locations
With many people struggling with finding ways to create interesting photos due to the current shelter in place, I decided to challenge myself with seeing what I could capture just in my back yard. While I have been out recently on hikes or trips to the beach some people prefer photographing in a more urban settings which can be difficult when going for a walk on the streets isn’t always a possibility.
I waited until towards the end of the day when the sun was lower in the sky, while many of my recent photography expeditions have involved shooting during midday when the sun is harsh and high in the sky, since we were just at home and not out in the world, there was no reason to not just wait until the lighting conditions were better. I used the low sun as a rim-light whenever possible, placing the light behind the subject, sometimes in the frame off to one side to provide a bit of interest in the image. I didn’t worry about blowing out the highlights as I wanted the images to have a very light and airy.
I played with different focal lengths with the same aperture, these two images were shot at f/1.8, one at 20mm and the other at 85mm, both on a full frame A7III. As you can see the two images have very different feels and the background compression changes the looks of the image a great deal. Personally I prefer the aesthetic of the 85mm for photographing singular subjects, especially people. Even though I tried both lenses for nearly every composition that I shot today, my favorite images were almost always the ones shot on the 85mm.
These two images were concepts that I played with using a variety of angles and focal lengths. The 24mm in both cases failed to isolate the subject satisfactorily. I prefer the background, and in the case of the greenery, the foreground compression provided by the longer focal length.
Having shot many different versions and poses for all of my ideas in the garden, and with sunset approaching, the light was fading from the enclosed yard. In order to chase the light I came up with the idea of taking some photos on the roof, capturing the last glimmers of the day slipping away on the horizon. Here most of my images shifted from the brighter more washed out aesthetic to a higher contrast darker feel, most of these images have the sun behind the subject as with the images in the garden, but the main difference is that the exposure is more geared towards keeping color in the sky and preserving the highlights than trying to have the subject in the foreground perfectly exposed.
