Part of the fun of taking pictures is trying to tell the story of a place or moment. While traveling a lot of pictures are about showing the 'wow factor'. But it's a hard thing to do, because even a good photographer will still know and feel the sentence 'you should have been there'. We want to recreate a moment, but in all fairness: you almost never succeed.
Open the trick bag #1: SCALE
One of the things you can do as a photographer is showing the scale of objects or places. This can be done by using a familiar object in the picture so the eyes and brain knows: ah, I have to interpret this picture starting with THIS known object!
One thing we all know the average size of is: a human person. Even though people have different heights, our brains know the average and can therefore use this information to scale the rest of the landscape.
[Here I was lucky. My boyfriend loves climbing rocks and I was resting on a bench. When he was done climbing he was in perfect alignment with my camera :-)]
Bringing your props
Bringing props is not that easy, because you often want them to be big. I'm a photographer who likes to pack light-weight, so I can actually move around and my gear won't tire me out. But... My partner and almost full-time travel buddy is The. Perfect. Photo Prop!
Being a partner of a photographer basically means he often hears me shouting things like:
"Climb up there!"
" Stand over there!"
Or,
"STOP! You're in my shot!" (This is when we photographers in a split second decide the picture will be WAY better if the loved ons is NOT in the picture... Ouch.)
[These leaves were HUGE. I needed a hand to be able to later tell people: this leaf was BIG!]
Having fun and getting results
Of course, the goal is to have fun and get the best results, so I try to minimise my 'orders' as much as possible. I need him to still want to travel with me in 50 years as well. After all, he's my best photo prop!
I'm planning on buying him some coats in different colours. So I can ask him: "Please climb up there, and ehm... could you please wear your red coat while doing this?"
(If you're currently seeing a photographer, use the above information to decide if you want to keep doing so.)
[At some point I asked: "Could you please go stand close to the water?" And he went. I waved at him multiple times and he kept on going, since I needed him even closer to the lake to be able to catch his silhouette. He got back to me with wet feet. But I was able to shoot this immense landscape with at least some idea of the scale of it.]
All pictures on steemit.com/@soyrosa are created and edited by me, Rosanne Dubbeld, 2001-2018. Contact me if you want to discuss licensing or collaborations on creative projects :-)