The topic this week was Angles. I chose this topic because I wanted to experiment with taking photos from different angles during a photo walk in downtown Calgary. Here are a few of my favourites:
Here are a few tips from this week’s photo shoot:
Angles
Challenge yourself to get pictures from different angles 🙂
Consider using angles which allow you to include other compositional elements in your photographs, such as leading lines and rule of thirds. For example, beams on buildings and tire tracks on a back alley road can help lead the viewer into the photograph.
It was tough to find a good angle to shoot one of the sculptures downtown. I wanted a photo of the face from inside the sculpture, and every angle I tried showed buildings and/or cranes through the openings in the sculpture. Depending on the angle, this was rather distracting. So I decided to try an angle which included one of the buildings intentionally, and made it look like the sculpture had a cigar in his mouth.
On some of the shots I got down as low as my tripod would go. On one of the photos, getting low accentuated the curve in the road in a Chinatown alley, which helped lead the viewer into the image.
With a couple of the photos I sat down and took the photo looking straight up. Sitting down helped me get a better angle without falling over lol!
On other photos I paid attention to my orientation to my main subject. Some photos looked better shot straight on, while others looked better if I stood to the left or right of the main subject.
Post Processing
I had a lot of fun with the post processing of my photos. I ran a few of the photos through Nik Software, including Silver Efex Pro & Color Efex Pro. These two programs can give your photos a gritty, grungy look. I liked the grungy look for alleyways in Calgary and on some of the buildings.
Noise Removal
Since the shots were taken in the evening and many were hand held, there was some noise in the photos. A downside to using some of the effects in Silver Efex Pro & Color Efex Pro is that they have a tendency to enhance the noise in the photo even further. A useful program for removing the noise is another Nik program called Dfine – it does a great job of reducing noise in a photo.
Have fun experimenting with angles!
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