Pierre Steenberg

Balancing the foreground and the background

June 06, 2021 • Leave a Comment

Having a well-balanced image is a vital part of good compositions. When thinking about balance we often think only of balancing laterally (horizontally), left versus right. Good balance though also looks at the balance of the image front versus back. It is one thing to have an object on the right balance out an object on the left. But your image wi...

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Dealing with Haze

May 30, 2021 • Leave a Comment

Photographers often hate haze. Photoshop and other editing software have dehaze filters to help photographers with this problem. The reason why we often dislike haze is that it washes out our images and just kills contrast. However, you may have read in one of my previous blogs that haze is not always to be disliked. At times we need to use haze to...

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Facing Crowds

May 23, 2021 • Leave a Comment

California was on fire. The area surrounding North Lake, Bishop was closed off to the public. Smoke filled the air to such an extent that the air quality was dangerous. The pandemic made travel difficult and photographers anxious to get out and shoot. Then one day we had a break. The smoke blew the other way and the passage to North Lake opened up.

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Breaking the rules

May 16, 2021 • Leave a Comment

Sometimes rules are meant to be broken. The rule of thirds, in photography, is a powerful rule and has been proven over time to be effective. However, sometimes you stumble across a situation where the rules just beg to be broken. I know that you may find it hard to believe but I actually photographed a tree just about in the middle of my image. I...

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Draw the viewer in with light

May 09, 2021 • Leave a Comment

If you follow my blog you will know that I often state that the viewer's eyes are not just controlled by composition but also by focus, color, and light. The human eye will always go to the lighter part/s of an image. Therefore, lighter parts of the image attract more attention than darker parts of the image. You will also remember from all my writ...

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Focus stacking

May 02, 2021 • Leave a Comment

Focus stacking is like exposure bracketing. You take multiple images of the same scene. The only setting you change though is the focus. Sometimes we want to place the camera right close to something in the foreground. But when the lens is so close to an object the background cannot be rendered sharp enough. Even using a small aperture does not suf...

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Painting with light

April 25, 2021 • Leave a Comment

Photography is after all painting with light. It is more about the light than about the scene. Combining great light with a great scene results in a great image. Light does not always fall uniformly. Clouds in front of the sun may cause shadows in some parts of the image while there is light in other parts of the image. Mountain peaks can block the...

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Clearance space

April 18, 2021 • Leave a Comment

Humans have two eyes. That gives us the ability to see and to measure depth and distance. We can see when something is closer to us than something else even though they are visually touching. When we look at a 2-D scene such as a computer screen or a print we kind of lose that ability because the image has been capture with one "eye" (lens and sens...

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Atmosphere

April 11, 2021 • Leave a Comment

At times nature just does not play along. Instead of getting upset rather ask what kind of image suits the prevailing conditions. Then shoot that. It might not be what you have in mind but it could yield nice images. Having images in mind, preconceived ideas, prior to going out to a location is a double-edged sword. With great planning and multiple...

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Balancing elements

April 04, 2021 • Leave a Comment

Balance is important in composing nice photographs. Having too many elements on one side of the photograph without something on the other side of the photograph to bring balance can make the one side feel too heavy. Visual weight is determined by size and distance. Closer elements weigh more visually than objects far in the distance. Hence a small...

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