Results tagged “contrast” from Bil's Eye View

On the way to a weekend Mother's Day dinner visit in Buffalo and some cruising in Ontario, this front lawn near Batavia, NY, caught my eye. This sea of blue belongs to a gentleman named Dennis, who doesn't cut his lawn in the spring until the forget-me-nots die off. Thanks for that.

Sprinkled in with the blues were dots of yellow dandelions. Now, Dennis is trying to rid his yard of the golden pests, but they provided a nice contrast to the blue waves (it was very, very windy).

Remember, contrast isn't just black and white, big or small, but shades of colors, times of day, fancy and plain, beautiful and ugly, etc.

There are plenty of photographers who do tremendous work in landscapes without a Center of Interest, the 'I' in The Best Rice. But I'm certainly not one of them, and it's not that I haven't tried.

The Muench family and Michael Fatali, among my favorite landscape photograhers, keep turning out masterpieces, seemingly daily, that I just stare and marvel at. Many have no center of interest, but instead, let the eye wander from corner to corner, edge to edge, as I salivate at the colors, the textures and locations.

When I grow up, I hope to shoot as well...

I've never had good luck at shooting without a center of interest. In this photo, taken in either the Canadian Rockies or the Yukon (I forget), the moose immediately grabs the viewers eye and then wanders to the snowy mountains in the background.

Try to find a single center of interest in a photo. Make it stand out with contrasting light, like this moose against the reflected lake, or with color or size. By the way, the 'C' in The Best Rice stands for contrast.

Normally, when we think of contrast in a photo, it's lightness or darkness.

But use other kinds of contrast--big and small, short and tall, fat and thin, old and young or black and white --to create an interesting picture.

This picture of York's Matthew Dorgan, taken in 1981, shows Matt sitting in his grandparents' pool on a floating chair. His aunt, who was watching him, swam up behind and stuck her feet up. It created a kind of head-scratcher moment. It's kind of comical, the size difference.

It was unrehearsed, candid and funny. Have your camera to catch moments of contrast. It's more than light and dark.