Winter = No Shooting in Exterior?
Winter arrives to Europe, the season I really don´t like. There are several reasons for it - it´s almost impossible to shoot outside with models unless you want to take pictures of coats and hats or don´t want to be a tyran and force them to take off their warm jackets and pose in "summer clothing".
Another thing why I don´l like winter is snow. Better said not snow exactly but the ugly, grey mass in which snow changes after few days. For past four years I live in a bigger city and trust me that it has nothing to do with beautiful, white snow pictures or photos.
Snow Storm Guarantees Clean White
I don´t want to complain about the weather in the whole article, don´t worry. Actually yesterday I decided to go out and shoot the snowy nature. It was snowing when I went outside which meant that snow was purely, pretty white and thus photogenic.
Do you know how many pieces of clothes I wore to not to freeze?
13!
I have no "behind the scene" photo but there is me after an hour outside while it was snowing :)
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| Bad quality because it was taken on my mobile phoen. |
Where Is This Place?
About a year ago I was more concentrated on shooting landscape than portraits. During that period I often heard from other people: "I wish to live in such a beautiful place like you." or "You´re so lucky to have these pretty locations near you."
Let me say something - I don´t live in some magical place surrounded by photogenic places. In fact, most of my landscape photos were taken in urban nature which is in almost every town like parks or forrest near by. The point to find a good, photogenic place is to look at your locations as at small, separated parts and not at the whole place.
I´m not sure if I say it right because English in not my native language. Let me give you an example. Photos shown above was taken in park near my flat. If I look at the location as whole I would see:
1. Playground
2. Bobing (?) Children
3. And ... no way ... an excavator
Stamp Tool is Your Friend
Another important thing while shooting urban landscape photo - don´t worry to use the Stamp Tool (S). If you shoot e.g. in park there always will be some people, garbage or bins. They can ruin the atmosphere of the whole picture but luckily for us photographers they can be easily removed with the Stamp Tool.
There is video somewhere below in this article. Besides other things you can see there how I clean my photos.
Misty World
I´m working on several projects, both photography and photo manipulation. One of them is called Misty World and its aim is to show people the ordinary, urban nature in bit fantasy, extraordinary way.
With this project I want to show that there is beauty all arround us, the only thing you need to do to see it is to look more carefully and pay attention to those ordinary things. Because it´s where the true magic hides.
Why am I mention this project here? I´d like to show you few photos from it and tell a little about the locations where photos were shot.
Following two photos were shot in the same place - pond in the middle of the city near my flat.
And here you can take a look at the whole location.
Photo below was shot in the park frequently visited by people from spa near by.
This photo is from the same location. Actiually the tunnel you can see is just right in front of the view on the picture above. When I was shooting the photo above I was standing in that tunnel.
The last one photo I´ll show you is from the same location as the picture right on the top. I´ve already show you how the location looks (playground, excavator).
Besides from that tram rides arround, there is some tram station etc.
As I said before the point is to look at some location as at small, separated places. This way you´ll be able to see many beautiful views and people won´t believe you that you took the picture near the place where they´re living.
If you´re interested you can take a look at the whole "Misty World" collection here.
Post Processing
I recorded editing of the following photo.
It was taken during the same snow storm as the picture at the very beginning of the article.
And there is the promissed video. (I don´t work that quickly :) playing speed is set on 400%.) You can see there working in Camera Raw, editing colors, using the Stamp Tool, applying texture and many more.
Conclusion
Besides that I want to tell you how much I hate winter I hope that the article gives you some ideas and inspiration where you can find good location for shooting.
I know there is plenty amazing mountains, rivers etc. but if you don´t have enough money (like me) to travel to that distant location and still want to shoot landscape photos you need to work with everything available.
Do you have any questions? Don´t hesitate and ask in the comments area. It would be also amazing if you write there what do you think about this article, about your experineces with finding locations or anything else what comes to your mind.
Have a beautiful Monday and even better week!
- Jarka