Un-suckfilters, everybody has one. Oh sure, you might not want to admit it, but you have one. Everyone does.

Back and white conversion or for the more creative duo-toned conversion has got to be the number one un-suck filter. We have all be tempted, but we must resist the evil that is known as duo-tone – at least when it is used to convert a bad image to a…bad image in two tones.

As a photographer based in an exotic location and one who travels to even more exotic locations I often get people emailing me to look at their travel galleries. I have seen some of the most appalling imagery exhibited as their strongest work only because it was shot in an amazing place. A bad image shot in India is still a bad image. A bad image shot in London is still a bad image.

I have come up with a partial list of popular Un-Suck Filters. Maybe you have know some others?

• B&W conversion
• Color and color grads effects
• General over processing in PS or LR
• Heavy vignette
• Highlight slider in LR (has to be mine)

Here’s the skinny: If a photo is out of focus no amount of detail in the shadows will change that. If an image is compositionally bad, it will be compositionally bad in back and white as well. As a growing photographer, you need to spend less time working on Photoshop and Lightroom tricks and more time working on composition and craft. Do you know what a well-composed photo looks like? Are you familiar with your kit enough to quickly capture an image in focus with the exposure you want and in a compelling composition? Forget correcting it in Photoshop. Truthfully – you might be able to correct a bad image a bit. But what does that say about your vision and your craft. It just tells me you’re lucky!

By the way, drop by ProPhoto Coalition for more articles on photography.

Photographers can cause ripples.

Recently I had an email from a reader who had some basic photography questions. He was dealing with some pretty common issues that most beginners deal with. He has been frustrated that his images, though taken in some very exotic locations don’t seem to grab the viewer. After I looked over some of his images and made some strong suggestions, I got the email below.  His questions are typical for where he is in his photographic journey. I figured the answers I would give might be helpful for others in the same place. So, I thought I would share them with you. I hope any beginners reading this, will find them helpful.

Beginner: Regarding composition — is there a book that you would recommend above the others?

Matt: Yes, several. But the one to start with is by Michael Freeman called “The Photographer’s Eye” from Larks Books. Michael goes into great depth covering composition and design. This book has really become a standard for beginners and advanced photographers alike, and no better place to start.

Beginner: The human side of my struggle in composition. A lot of the time I am walking around through a market etc and taking a lot of pictures on the fly.  I am not looking at the images after I take them but just trying to get the scene before people start to react to the camera.

Matt: This reminds me of an old joke. A guy walks into see his doctor and tells him, “Doc, it hurts when I do this.” The Doctor replies wisely, “Well, stop doing that!” The answer is stop walking through the market and stop and experience the market and it’s life. You will never get more than”snaps” if all you do is breeze through a place and take snaps. We get good images because we seek them out, we watch for them, we observe life around us. If you are there for a few minutes and raise a camera to your face, snap a picture and then move on, yes, people will react. But, the converse is true if you slow down and join in what is happening around you. Buy some fruit. Ask questions. Show them you are genuinely interested in them, once they see that, they drop their guard and you can take plenty of photos. You will find most of them will not mind you taking their image. The bonus is that many of them will go about their daily business and pay no attention to you. Now your subjects are relaxed around you, they don’t feel threatened and you get candid images that you can take your time making, frame in the camera and not feel rushed.

Beginner: In practice how do you deal with this?  How do you try to really compose the picture well while at the same time mitigate against the scene changing with the introduction of the camera. How much time do you spend framing a shot vs cropping later?

Matt: As I said above, you really need to slow down and experience the scene. At the risk of sounding rather Zen, imagine it this way. If you throw a stone into a puddle you will make quite the splash and plenty of ripples. But wait and those ripples subside and everything goes back to normal except, the stone is in the middle of the puddle. Think of yourself as that stone. When you first enter a scene you create quite a stir. The best thing you can do is calmly wait with your camera at your side. Let the ripples subside and eventually people get used to you being around and start to relax and soon you will be allowed to shoot without much changes in the scene around you. As for the second part of your question; I frame the image I want in the camera. If I have to crop in Lightroom it usually is only around 5- 10% of the image.

Beginner: For rule of thirds and off center subjects, how do you setup your cameras auto focus system for times when you are doing “quick shots” and moving fast?  Typically I set it to use the center point so that with my old camera it wouldn’t pick the wrong thing to focus on.  What do you do?  Do you let the camera decide where the best focus point is in those situations?  Are you able to just really quickly change the auto focus points on the camera?  Or do you focus lock and then frame?

Matt: It is not a good thing to ever let the camera decide things. The camera is rather stupid, it doesn’t have a very big brain. This is the very reason we don’t shoot JPEG. We don’t want the camera making decisions on how the image should look, right? So, for heavens sake, why would you let the camera decide the focal point of the image? You have two choices as you mentioned and I do both. You can scroll through your AF points and set the one point that corresponds to the composition you think you will be shooting. I only do this if you have time and good contrast. The outer focal points are not as sensitive to contrast as the center point and thus not as quick to focus. The other way, is  to keep the center AF point your active point; focus and then recompose. Using the center point will give you a better chance at nailing that focus as it is more sensitive to contrast and focuses quicker. However, be careful. The fact is if you are using a very narrow depth of field and you are close to the subject, you can in fact focus on say someones eyes, then recompose and then be out of focus. The film plan is a flat surface and if you are close to a subject, when you tilt the camera to the eyes and then recompose you change the distance of the film plane to the subjects eye. The change is very slight, but if you are working with a 1.2 lens like I often do, then you might see a difference. It really comes down to using the technique that works for you for that moment. But, do me a favor, don’t ever keep all the AF points active and thing you cover all your focal bases. If that is your method, you are in for some out of focus images.

Beginner: So far I typically snap the picture as quickly as possible (and keep moving) and then crop later.  But I am betting there is a better way.

Matt: There’s that snatch and grab thing going again. Take your time, compose in the frame, and savor the moment. Observe your surroundings. Save your pixels and compose in the camera.

Beginner: I guess in the end I see the distractions (telephone lines etc) but I am not always sure how to change the composition without changing the shot by my presence.

Matt: You just answered your own question. You have to change your presence as you put it. I would simply say change your position. When looking through a lens and composing an image, often – maybe even most of the time – distractions can be eliminated by shifting a few inches or feet. Look at the example below. The first image had all kinds of distracting elements behind the woman. But, by moving over to the right a few feet, not only did I find a cleaner background, I also (and this is a big thing!) found much better light. Remember, when you move, the quality of the light changes. The fact is, the light stays the same but the angle you view the light changes. So, beware of  the background as well as the light quality. I will change my position for either or both, as in this case.

Beginner: Last question –  I have lightroom, but I don’t have the full version of Photoshop do I need it?

Matt: No. In fact 95 to 98% of my work never leaves Lightroom anymore. Lightroom is so incredably powerful you only really need Photoshop to do a few things like cloning  or perhaps some difficult spot removal. I will say this, that the new Photoshop CS5 has Content aware delete and cloning that is remarkable. I have never seen anything like it. But, in short, no. You really can get by on Lightroom alone. Do your self a big favor and make sure you have Lightroom 3. There are some really great books that can be of some great help. Scott Kelby’s, “Lightroom 3 book for digital photographers” and Martin Evening’s “The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Book, The Complete Guide for Photographers” Both look like real winners. I just got both of these yesterday from my buddies at PeachPit. Then of course, I can’t mention Lightroom 3 with out talking about David duChemin’s new book hot off the press, “Vision & Voice: Refining Your Vision in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom“. I don’t have it yet. But David gave me a sneak peak sometime back and, like all David’s books, it promises to be the one you keep returning to. More than a “how-to” book on Lightroom. This book promises to help you use Lightroom to express your vision that you had when you took the image to begin with.

I hope this has been helpful. If nothing more than a gentle reminder that you can’t stand with your feet nailed to the floor and expect to get great images. You have to work the scene and the light. Spend time with your subjects and learn to see the image in the camera when you take it.

If there is one question I get whenever I teach or discuss composition it is, “Yeah but do you shoot with all these compositional rules in mind or is it something you see afterwards?”  To put it another way, are these compositional rules prescriptive or descriptive? And the answer, of course, is a little of both.

Now, when I run a seminar or workshop and teach a load of compositional rules, I don’t expect my students to go out and start applying all of the rules right away when they are shooting. The fact is, when we go shooting, we are thinking about the subject almost to the point of becoming myopic. We become oblivious to everything else around us. Hopefully, we will try to think about a few of the basic rules of composition at the same time, such as thinking about where the subject falls in the frame, where the lines or elements in the frame are that we can use to draw the viewers eye to the subject. But there are a whole host of compositional elements that we never think to look for in a photo. And quite frankly, most of those would fall in the category I’d call descriptive.

While cropping, positioning the subject in the frame, the use of contrast and balance, being aware of the foreground, middle ground and background, rhythm or repetition and yes, even eye-lines can all be things  that we look for in the view finder there is so much more that will help us in zeroing in on that great image once we get it into Lightroom. These are the factors that help you select powerful images.

When I am in the field, I will often take 5 to 10 images of any one subject. I work the subject for different angles, light, expression and gesture. After I import the images into Lightroom, a lot of the other compositional elements come into play. It is now that the strong images rise to the surface. There’s a chance, and over the years it’s gotten a lot more than just a chance, that I know which image is going to be the strongest before ever importing them into Lightroom. But certainly, once the images are in there, a few images will stand out among the rest. It is now that I look for strong elements of design and composition, things that I might never have seen in the viewfinder. A good example is an image I shot of some farmers winnowing their barley harvest.

This image has some very strong repetition of triangles. I saw one maybe two of the triangles when I was shooting. But later when I look at the image in Lightroom I saw many, many more. I have marked a few above, but there are still more in the frame to be found.

Much of composition is learned and reinforced with practice and self-assignments. Then later, sometimes much later, it enters into the intuitive part of the brain. One day you realize that you are not thinking about diagonal lines curves and vectors, they just start showing up in the images. This is a lot like any art or sport. You learn technique so well that it becomes second nature. I fenced in college.  I was mediocre at best. But I fenced against some of the best. I can tell you they were not thinking, perry, repost, lunge, disengage.  It just magically happened. It was all second nature. Because we practiced the techniques over and over again. And so it is with composition. The more you practice, the more you critique your own images, the more it will become second nature.