Seeing things through a different lens - Yours!

​Hello again.

This week saw our latest photography workshop with 3 guests at Wightwick Manor and Gardens, a stunning location to work on getting more from your photography. The monthly workshops have been running now for 7 years and we all take something home from our time together. Interestingly 2 of my guests were ex professional drummers, something I would love to have done but it just went to prove that most, if not everyone has a creative side and they were looking to extend theirs with time spent looking at how to get better results with their cameras.

The workshops have been designed and updated to ensure that everyone takes something new from the day so that they can be confident whether that be the next break or holiday or at home with family and friends. My simple explanations and free set of notes ensure that reviewing what we have practiced can be replicated in their own time with hands on being the best learning style for most of us.

The Path leading up to the Manor at Wightwick gardens

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With the use of a few simple techniques like leading lines we can make our images much more pleasing to the eye and take the viewers eye to where we want it to rest as in these 2 from this week.

The path through the daffodils drawing the eye to the house.

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Simplicity often works and the feedback on these few tips is always "I wish I had known that before' and 'I won't forget that for my next trip out'. Probably the greatest impact on everyone's learning and photography is something I call the 'oxo' or 'noughts and crosses' technique. If we imagine our subject being static in one place be it a building, flower, animal or child with relatively small changes to where we are and shoot from we can often dramatically alter the outcome of our photograph.
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Simply put when facing the subject if we shoot from our chest/midriff we get the outcome of the central image below - full face and balanced foreground and background, probably the image that we automatically settle for a lot of the time. If we raise our camera higher we get the top image with more of the ground and an image looking down on the head/face and if we get prone or on one knee we can get the image centre/bottom row. So in essence without the subject or our selves moving our feet we have 3 potential images to work with. Those 3 options become 9 if we then take a step to the left or right meaning we have a lot of creative, compositional choice from a simple technique I call oxo.  

The 9 differing outcomes from changing the shooting height and a single step left or right.

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I encourage my guests to try each of these variations and review in full when they are back home on a tablet or pc/laptop when the differences show out more. Most of all trying things in the field brings confidence and that brings enjoyment meaning quite often photography can be fun again.
Finally a couple of images where using oxo gave a more enjoyable/pleasing image .

Try these techniques for yourselves or join me for these and more on my monthly National Trust Workshops at Wightwick Manor or Attingham Park and let me help you see more through your lens.

The details are here . https://bit.ly/2EfyU57

Regards

​Lindsey