How to get cool photos from uninspiring locations

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There isn’t much that beats capturing the majesty of a spectacular landscape during the magic hours around dawn and dusk, but shooting landscapes within these strict time constraints is a luxury many of us can’t indulge in too often. However, if you look around, you’ll discover that there are visual possibilities and cool photos just about everywhere, even in the local supermarket’s car park.

Okay, it might not be Derwent Water, but it was only five minutes down the road and it made a shopping trip a bit more interesting.

Even on the most banal occasions, it’s a great idea to discipline your eye so that you’re on a constant lookout for potential photographs.

Get into the habit of keeping a basic SLR to hand – a body with a fixed 50mm lens will be more than adequate.

Keep your technique simple and look for patterns, textures, colours and shapes in road markings, signs and other everyday objects normally taken for granted that have the potential to make cool photos.

Here, we pre-visualised how a variety of shapes might look in a grid, and once assembled they’ve created a striking abstract montage.

Keep it simple
You won’t need tons of equipment to take cool photos in a car park. We used a standard 50mm lens on DSLR, as it’s light. In aperture priority mode, we exposed for 1/125 sec at f/8 using ISO 200.

Raw power
To maximise quality, especially if you plan to make large prints, shoot in raw and process in Adobe Camera Raw. Increase the Contrast and Vibrancy to give the images punch and make the shapes more defined.

Make a grid
Create a new document in Photoshop and place each image on its own layer. There may be a bit of trial and error in getting them in the right position – look for combinations that make an interesting whole.

Posted on Wednesday, October 3rd, 2012 at 11:44 am under Photography Tutorials, Tutorials.