Problem Solving Your Way Through Photography

You raise your camera to your eye and you take a photograph. When you get home tonight you review your photos and with some disappointment find that you don’t like any of them.

Do you move on without thinking any further, or do you ask yourself why? Why don’t you like the photos?

The more specific you get with this, the more powerful this technique.

Maybe the photo’s too dark. Maybe it’s a little blurry. Maybe there is a distracting color or shape. Maybe there’s a weird shadow that’s out-of-place. Maybe the composition doesn’t look right.

What could make the photo better? What would you do different next time?

Set a higher shutter speed? Frame out the distracting element? Move to better light?

Another question - What made you raise the camera in the first place? What made you want to take the photo?

Was it a pretty sunrise? An interesting building or animal?

There is a specific image that you wanted to capture - what elements helped you and what hurt you? Get specific.

Here’s a common example:

You take a photo of your friend in your house. Here’s the breakdown:

Reason for taking the photo: He or she was dressed nicely and looking good!

Problems:

• The lighting looks bad, their face is too dark.

• The background shows the messy room which is distracting.

• You only took 1-2 photos, and your friend is making an awkward facial expression.

Now it’s time to address the issues.

Solutions:

• The lighting looks bad, their face is too dark. - Try moving with your subject around the room until the lighting looks better - my favorite lighting is light from a window.

• The background shows the messy room which is distracting. - Simple fix, either take a few minutes to clean up the room or move with your camera to get a cleaner background.

• You only took 1-2 photos, and your friend is making an awkward facial expression. - Take more photos and experiment with different poses/facial expressions, the more you experiment, the more likely you’ll have 1-2 photos that turn out good!

Bonus: Remember the reason why you’re taking the photo. Your friend was dressed nicely, maybe their outfit is a striking color. How could you emphasize the part of the photo you like? Perhaps you find some colorful curtains in your house that match their outfit? Techniques like this will help to improve the photo even more!

You might not know the solutions right away, it takes practice and patience to learn how to solve these problems. The first step is always to identify what you don’t like about the initial photos, if you don’t know what to do from there EXPERIMENT! Take the same photo, but from different angles, move your subject, change the lighting (turn off/on lights, open/close windows). The more you do this, the more you’ll learn. Maybe you’ll find some shooting techniques that you really enjoy, which you can add to your toolkit.

Even the most professional photographers experiment, often the best photos are the ones you discover while experimenting and having fun!

Below you can see my own learning process in some side-by-side examples :

Problem (left): Composition is bad - sunrise is blocked by the trees, all subjects are too centered in the frame, capybara silhouette gets lost in the dirt in the foreground.

Solution (right): Composition is fixed, sunrise is no longer covered, elements are evenly spread throughout the frame, capybara standing in the water creates a more striking/separated silhouette.

Problem (left): Photo is taken while standing which emotionally distances us from the owl. Owl also gets lost in the background of the dirt.

Solution (right): Photo is taken while lying on the ground and closer to the owl. The subject is now separated from the background, and the low perspective connects us with the owl emotionally giving it a sense of power.

Note: The only element I was unhappy with in the final photo, is the sky. The sky is somewhat of a boring background. If there was a dark, blurry forest in the background (or even if there were some interesting clouds in the sky) I think it would improve this photo greatly. Unfortunately this was all I had to work with. Other photographers might replace the sky in photoshop, but I would rather preserve the authenticity of the photo.

Problem (left): Subtle, but the sun came out from the clouds and was hitting the baby more directly, creating a more harsh/less-pleasant light. The sky is blown out, and the photo isn’t cropped which distracts from the subject.

Solution (right): The sun is behind the clouds, creating a softer, more pleasant light. Photo is cropped slightly, which emphasize the subject, and the exposure outside the window is better.

I hope you got something out of the post. I would love to see some before/after comparisons of your own photos, sharing what you’ve learned!