Creating Photographs with Impact

By Carl Botha – Senior Lecturer at the College of Digital Photography

Tip 1: Simplify

One of the easiest and probably most effective ways of creating an eye-catching image is by ‘getting in closer’. By getting closer you eliminate a lot of unnecessary information making for a striking, simple yet powerful image.

Tip 2: See the light

Undoubtedly the most important ‘ingredient’ in any great photographic image is light and by better understanding and using light, you will find a marked improvement in your photography.

Consider that light has colour and start looking for it. Between about 10am and 3pm sunlight loses most of its colour becoming clean, white and boring. Natural light changes colour throughout the day, which is the reason why we prefer to make photos early in the morning or late in the afternoon, to capture the colour of the light. Early morning light has some wonderful pastels like peach, pink and sometimes a bit of magenta, whereas late afternoon light is rich in warm yellows and golden oranges. Often these colours can become the very reason for wanting to capture an image.

Tip 3: Make use of colour

We know that light has colour, but were also surrounded by colour. Think about how we use colour in our daily lives, how it is infused in our language to describe feelings. We have all heard about someone feeling blue or about seeing red when we get angry. Colours are very closely associated with moods and emotions. Try using colours that add emotion to your image. Some emotive colour associations :


Using colour and composition to create Impact
Blue – Feelings of melancholy, feeling blue, singing the blues and the ever popular ‘Blue Monday”

Red – Passion, stop signs and danger

Orange – The colour of fire and warmth

Green – Freshness, nature and fertility, often used in scenes with ‘zen like’ calmness

Yellow – The first colour we humans notice or see, very lively and almost grabs the eye

Brown – Earthy, nature and associated with wood and trees, very neutral

Grey – The most neutral colour, enhances colours used with it, feelings of dreariness or depression
Black – Traditionally associated with death but can convey feelings of chic elegance and distinction


Tip 4: Exciting camera angles

Shooting from shoulder height is boring. We see life from that height anyway and therefore we like seeing images captured from interesting angles. Think about shooting directly down on someone from a balcony, a ladder or any elevated surface when your angle is exaggerated. Now try the opposite, shooting up from very low angles. Have you ever taken photos while lying on your back? If you lie at the base of a tree, the corner of a building or even at a person’s feet while using a wide angle lens the distortion can become extreme and make for a very striking image with loads of impact. Seeing from these different angles is not that new to us, we did it as children. We were almost always looking up at things and when picked up by adults we were then looking down from what was to us, extreme and exciting angles.

Tip 5: Distort with intent

Using a wide angle lens causes distortion which makes anything closer to the lens appears bigger than it is in real life but also diminishes in size anything which is further away from the lens. This can be a great way of getting some fun into your images and works particularly well with children and animals. Try shooting from interesting angles when you do this, possibly getting onto a ladder and shooting down on a person would make their heads looks enormous with tiny feet.

Tip 6: Managing contrast

If you are faced with contrast in a scene where you want to bring detail into dark shadow areas, either use a flash to fill in some light or consider using a reflector. Anything that can reflect light into shadow areas will work relative to the size of the area. Macro photographers for example tend to work very close up in tiny scenes where something as simple as the back of a business card can become a small reflector. If you want to make your own little reflectors with tin foil just remember to crumple the tin foil up thoroughly before stretching it over any surface.

Tip 7: Shooting from the hip

Photography Clint Eastwood style? Have you ever tried capturing images without looking through the viewfinder? Probably not! This can be a fantastic way of capturing exciting and unusual images of people, buildings or just about any subject matter you can think of. Consider walking through a shopping mall or a busy office building with your camera hanging from your hand and shooting as you walk. Try not to raise the camera higher than your waist and ‘force’ yourself to keep shooting without being tempted to look at the LCD every few minutes. While doing this you could intentionally slow down your shutter speed to blur both the movement of your hand as you walk as well as the movement of anybody in the scene. Another way of doing this is by hanging your camera around your neck ‘ala tourist style’. You won’t be raising the camera to your face at any point however. Keep taking shots continuously. When you think you have a possible scene that might work just depress the shutter release button while the camera hangs from your neck, or you could get a cable release and stick it out of sight and shoot that way.


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