Finding Places to Shoot

One of the biggest problems for a photographer, beyond creating images, is figuring out exactly what to shoot. Unfortunately, most of the planet isn't all that photogenic and one can waste a lot of shoe leather pounding around the neighborhood looking for something interesting. I keep a notebook by my computer and write down pertinent directions for any interesting places I find as I surf the internet. But that's hit and miss, especially if you're on the road and looking for places ahead to explore. With gas prices what they are (and expected to rise significantly in the future) it's important to have a plan.

I've found several places where one can get guidance in this regard. All of them require you to be on the internet to access the images. One is an application call Stuck On Earth from Trey Ratcliff, the well known travel photographer. You can look at photos taken by Trey and others and get useful information about how the picture was taken. It's overlaid on Google Maps so you can see exactly where the photographer stood to make the shot. Unfortunately it's only good for some MAC computer (OSX version 10.7 and higher), for the iPhone/iPad crowd and Android. No Windows versions yet. But it's excellent for finding locations that produce good images. Trey admits to using it himself to find good places to shoot.

The other application I often use is run by Google. Panoramio shows interesting photos overlaid on Google Maps with location information so you can see where the picture was taken. As you zoom in more and more pictures open up so you can drill down to a specific street or map location. No all the images are that interesting but you can always find gems. Again, it's about saving time and aching feet.

There's also a site called Atlas Obscura which details interesting places to visit and photograph. Not sure it's exactly a directory to photo sites but it does provide details about the place and why you might want to visit it.

Look Under the Covers

Sometimes it pays to look a bit deeper when composing a shot. A few years ago I was visiting a friend in Woodbury, CT. It was in the late spring and he had a huge flowering bush in his front yard which was covered with small white flowers (wish I could tell you the name of the tree but he didn't know). I had just bought a new camera and was itching to take some shots to see how good the images were so I wandered out in the early afternoon and started poking around in the shadows. The bush, all 10 feet of it, intrigued me but the sun was so bright I knew any images would be washed out and uninteresting. Just out of curiosity I stuck the lens through the outer leaf layer and was amazed to find a whole other world in the shadows. Here the flowers were more vibrant and the colors more exciting. A few dozen shots later I had plenty of images to work with.

In Photoshop I wanted to try something different. Although the image was interesting it lacked depth and, quite frankly, there wasn't a real focal point. I decided I'd create one by muting out much of the image and concentrate attention on the closest grouping of flowers and associated buds. Using the selection tools I picked the background elements and converted them to black & white. In this way, the viewer's eye is drawn to the foreground and the colorful buds. A nice image made better by being a bit creative.

Beautiful flowers - 100 ISO, f/4, 1/80 sec (license CC BY-NC 4.0)