Dissecting a Digital Photo: Common Non-Technical Mistakes

Everybody can take pictures. But not everybody can create a good photograph. Don’t blame it on the camera. It is the man looking at the viewfinder that does it.

A photograph is a representation of an image. Capture that image and it becomes a photo in the LCD screen of your digital camera. But look at the photo again. Does it truly represent the image you saw? Were you able to capture it the way it registered in your mind?

Now, we will take a look at a few photos and note some of the most common non-technical mistakes people make when taking pictures. As a standard rule, a good photograph must always tell something. And the person looking at it should get the meaning. Visually, a good photograph, must also look good.

By non-technical, it means it doesn’t involve any of those big photography words such as apertures, shutter speed, ISO, metering, exposure compensation, etc. Assume that these photos were taken with the most basic digital camera. But it has a flash button for the flash and no-flash option, a decent optical zoom and an auto focus – standard features of a digital camera.

Let’s get started:

• Photo with no subject

This is a landscape picture. It’s mostly green, with lots of grass and some houses.

And that’s all it is. The place is probably breathtaking in a panoramic view, and that was the image that registered in the eyes and mind of the person who took the shot. Sadly, he wasn’t able to capture it.

The subject of a panoramic view is the panoramic view itself. Take a part of it, and it losses its magic. What he could have done is take the picture at a wider angle. If that is not possible, take backward steps till a good perspective is achieved. If that is still not possible, zoom in only on the interesting elements in the view and make it the focal of the picture. Or perhaps, a change in the position and angle of the shot can remedy the problem.

Remember that what you see is not what the camera will take. The lens of a digital camera is limited. What filled the viewfinder is what will come out in the photo, and not what you actually saw.

• Photo with no clear subject

Photographs must not only have a subject, but a clear, distinct subject.

The subject is the main element in a photo. It is what draws your eyes to look at the photo and often the one that tells the story. Other objects must complement and not obstruct it.

So, the photograph above could be a picture of a busy swimming area. But my attention shifts on the tree on the right side. Also, the children seem to have stories of their own and my eyes can’t seem to find a single thing to focus on. It reminds me of looking at a diorama of a town, where each miniature piece has something interesting to say. But this is a photograph, not a diorama.

Assume we’ll retake the picture, how can we correct the mistakes noted above?  If the subject is the swimming area, go find a better angle. No obstruction please. If it is the children, find the most interesting, the one that easily catches the attention, and focus on that one. Now, if is about the tree, find a better tree.

• Focus, Focus, Focus

Blur often occurs when your subject is in motion. But a blur on a stationary subject? It’s painful to look at.

We all know what should be done about it. Right?

Auto focus is a standard feature in most digital cameras. Even some cameraphones have it. It’s very easy to use and it should be one of the first things you need learn when taking pictures.

To focus, aim at your subject then press the shutter button halfway. After about 2 seconds, press it all the way down. You will feel that the button somewhat hits something inside when you press it halfway. But you don’t hear the shutter go off yet, so know the picture is not yet taken.

Try it again.

Aim at your subject. Do you think the subject’s all framed and ready? Now, press the shutter button halfway. Did you feel it? Like it hit something. Then, with all your might, press it all the way down till you hear the shutter sound. Look at your masterpiece. Ain’t it sharp and crisp? This is how you should take pictures from now on.

• Flash Issues

Flash, like auto-focus, is an important feature in any camera. You use flash when the ambient light is insufficient to illuminate the subject. But that’s not all there is to it.

The photo above is a beach scene, where the sun is up, the temperature is high and the light is blinding. So you turn off the flash and take a picture. Everything came up well except for a darkened subject. Why?

The position of the light source relative to the subject is an important indication whether you should use flash or not. If the light source is behind the subject, flash. If it is in front of the subject, no flash. If the light source is on one side of the subject, using a flash is upon your discretion. Light coming from the side usually casts a beautiful effect on the photo when no flash is fired.

But it also depends on the intensity of the light. As mentioned before, when the light source is not enough to light up the subject, you must use a flash, regardless of where the light is coming from. Strong lights and flash can be too harsh on your subjects. Subtle lights with no flash, on the other hand, creates a softer effect.

Let’s add another one: distance.

The light from the flash is limited by the distance of the subject to the camera. Imagine a flashlight. The farther the subject is, the weaker the light becomes. Each digital camera has its own flash range depending on the focal length of the lens. Common flash range among point and shoot digital cameras are no more than 10 feet. Beyond that, the light from the flash can no longer illuminate the subject.

Take a look at this photograph.

The flash was fired but the subject was too far from the camera, rendering the light from the flash useless. Notice that the light only covered a few feet from the edge of the pool. The subject, whatever it is standing in the middle of pool, is not illuminated by the flash.

If you can, it’s better to just get closer to the subject.

• Beware of the Red Eye

Many photos have been plagued with the Red Eye since the good old days of film cameras. You know what it looks like. And yet, no single digital camera manufacturer has come up with a 100% foolproof feature that can obliterate the Red Eye phenomena.

There are several suggested techniques. One is to use the red eye reduction function of your camera. But asking your subject to not look directly on the flash bulb is a much better solution than this. The only problem is, dogs and cats can’t follow this trick. Another effective way to avoid this is to use an external flash and point it slightly above the eyes of your subject. But since we’re using the basic of the basic digital cameras, this is not an option.

So when your photos are inflicted with the red eye virus, you can just have any good photo editor click them away.

Now, smile for the camera.

There you have it, the common photography mistakes that we are guilty of. If I missed something, you’re welcome to add. And together, let’s make digital photos a better thing to look at.

Photograph or Picture?

Most people use them interchangeably. But are they really one and the same thing? If you’ll look at the meaning of each word in Wikipedia, you’ll understand how one is different from the other.

• A photograph (often shortened to photo) is an image created by lightfalling on a light-sensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic imager such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are created using a camera, which uses a lens to focus the scene’s visible wavelengths of light into a reproduction of what the human eye would see.

• In common usage, an image (from Latin imago) or picture is an artifact, usually two-dimensional, that has a similar appearance to some subject—usually a physical object or a person. Images may be two-dimensional, such as a photograph, screen display, and as well as a three-dimensional, such as a statue. They may be captured by optical devices—such as cameras, mirrors, lenses, telescopes, microscopes, etc. and natural objects and phenomena, such as the human eye or water surfaces.

Or we can put it this way: Picture is something that represents something. The representation does not always have to be tangible as one can have a “mental picture” of an object. Photograph is a representation of a picture that is created specifically on a photographic media. Thus, we can say that all photographs are pictures, but not all pictures are photographs.

What is a Digital Photo?

A digital photo is a photograph taken using any digital device that renders the captured image electronically. According to Wikipedia, “most photographs are created using a camera”, although I am not aware of any other device or devices that can be used for this purpose. Digital camera, cellphone camera and webcam are the most popular gagdets for taking a digital photo. You can also use a scanner to scan actual photographs and convert them into files that can be read by the computer, thus making them “digital”.

Digital photos are stored as image files such as JPEG, TIFF, RAW and BMP.

• JPEG or Joint Photographic Experts Group. The extension name is JPG but other OS might use JPEG. It supports 8 bits per color (red, green, blue) for a 24-bit total, producing relatively small but good quality files. Most digital cameras save images in the JPEG format, but it is not recommended with files that will undergo multiple edits as the quality degrades when repeatedly edited and saved.

• TIFF or Tagged Image File Format. TIFF (or TIF) is a high-color-quality format that normally saves 8 bits or 16 bits per color (red, green, blue) for 24-bit and 48-bit totals, making the file size larger. The TIFF image format, unlike JPEG, does not decrease in quality when the image is manipulated repeatedly, but not all digital cameras saves files in this format and TIFF is not nearly as popular as the JPEG format.

• RAW is not a single file format but rather refers to a family of raw image formats. RAW is not a standard file extension, but loosely pertains to “raw image data”.  You can think of it as the “negative” of digital photos because they contain all information about image but cannot be viewed, or stored, as an image yet. Not all digital camera and certainly no cellphone or web camera save images in their RAW format. But when available, it is best to edit images in these formats as they do not degrade in quality. However, each camera manufacturer has its own raw format and more often, provides it’s own image editor to manipulate the file. Not all graphic programs can recognize and handle all available raw formats.

• BMP or Bitmap images are used mostly in Microsoft Windows. Typically, BMP files are uncompressed, hence they are large; the advantage is their simplicity, wide acceptance, and use in Windows programs.

Digital photos easily won the favor of a lot of people over the lab-processed and non-digital prints simply because you can do almost anything with them. Kodak moments are not only captured in photographs but are recreated, enhanced and reused in various media, shown in numerous instances around the globe. Photo albums are no longer kept in shelves or drawers. Photo frames do not gather dust anymore.

You can choose to have your digital photos printed and stored like good old photographs in a photo album or displayed on a digital photo frame. Or you can save them in your computer’s hard drive, or a memory stick, or any digital storage you have. You can bring them with you always, on your cellphones, digital key chains, or multimedia players. You can upload them on the internet, post them at Flickr or Picasa, place them in your online photo albums, Phlog them, or share them with your friends through email.

If there’s something you want to be added or removed from your digital photos, Photoshop has tools that can alter history. You can create a photograph of something that do not exist out of something that exist quite boringly. If you hate the color of your shirt or the big, red, swollen pimple on your nose the day you were photographed, the magic is all in your hands and the mouse underneath or the Wacom Pen in it. If you want to make a postcard, a poster, an impression, a statement, a magazine front-cover with you on it, you are only be limited by the graphic software that you are using.

If you think about it, digital photos are no longer just photographs or image file formats. They are so much more.