At last I can wish my reader a “Happy New Year”! Testing positive for Covid on Jan 1st was not a great start to the year, and it’s taken a while to get back to feeling anything like normal. Anyway, I’m back now, and keen to pass on my photographic ideas.
Today’s post is all about a very simple thing. It’s to show how different your images can look if you change the focusing point. These two images were taken in Millennium Square in Bristol just before Christmas. There are some water curtains in the square, and the falling water runs down a shiny stainless steel surface. Each image was taken using a mobile phone camera and edited in Snapseed.
For this first image I focused on the water falling down the steel. The red/orange lights of the funfair give some warm areas to counteract the blue/steely colours. The shutter speed has been short enough to stop the water movement and produce an abstract image with interesting colours and shapes.
For this second image my point of focus was the funfair’s reflection rather than the water. I switched to one of my favourite modes, “Silky Water”, and this has averaged out the water flow somewhat. To be perfectly honest I was unaware of just how clear this would make the little boy standing on the edge of the water feature. The cool blue of his coat adds a real poignancy to the image; he looks so isolated. There’s a fair amount of camera movement as well as water movement, but to me that makes the image more powerful.
It’s always worth checking to see what will happen if you change your point of focus.
by Derek Gale