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Rain stops pay- Freelance Photography Made Easy
Life as a landscape and travel specialist can be very trying sometimes. The hours, days and weeks even, I have sat around waiting for the rain to stop or the cloud to break doesn’t even bear thinking about and finding things to do whilst you wait becomes a vital game to stop yourself going mad. Out in the field you are limited with your options, but if the weather has even stopped me heading out, then at home I’m filing, writing or catching up on some other tedious job that needs doing.
Taking pictures however is also an option, but only if I step away from my usual subjects and get my thinking cap on for a different range of images. Photo libraries are full of pictures of everyday objects, either as they appear or more often, illustrating a concept or idea. Take a look online and you will see pictures of flowers, fruit, drawing pins, usb leads, and all manner of household objects. Shot well and with a bit of imagination, then its easy to shoot these objects in a way that they will sell to a wide range of markets for all sorts of reasons. For instance, take a shot of an apple. On its own it’s quite plain and ordinary but could be used to illustrate healthy eating. Nicely lit and sprayed with some water, especially with its green colour, conveys an image of fresh and cool. Now, wrap a tape measure around it and it illustrates dieting and keeping in shape. Add another and stack them up and you get the concept of balance. Leave it to go off and turn brown and it will convey a different message of rotting fruit and getting old. You can see how one object can convey different concepts.
If you can be original with your ideas, then all sorts of household objects can be used this way, as well of course as being used in a straightforward shot of the actual object.
The great thing is that you don’t need any complicated studio set up to take these pictures either. Window light is simple, free and ideal for most subjects, especially if used with a white reflector on the other side to fill in the shadows. A bright, overcast day is ideal for this to reduce the possibility of harsh shadows, so will suit that day when you can’t get out anyway. I also use a photo lightbox placed on it’s side for lighting, again combined with a white reflector and this produces the effect of soft box in a large studio. For more creative lighting, I use my old photography light projector, which adds shadows when I need them, but also means that I am in control of where the shadows appear and which direction the light hits the subject.
A digital camera with macro lens or even a standard 50mm is ideal for the shots and I put the camera on a tripod and fire with a cable release so that I can hold the reflector in place or balance the main subject or make fine adjustments to the composition. A wide aperture is often the best setting, especially for getting creative shots of things like flowers or for just creating a shallow depth of field, which works well.
White, or sometimes coloured card, provides the backdrop for the subjects and my reflector is either another piece of white card or a homemade piece of polystyrene board with tin foil stuck to it.
I keep a notebook of ideas and suitable subjects to shoot that I often notice when out and about. Sometimes I have the idea of a subject to shoot and then think of how it can convey a certain concept, whilst other times I think of the concept like strength or love and then list subjects that could be used to illustrate this idea. It amazing how many ideas spring to mind when you start thinking about it.
So, if you stuck indoors and have a few hours on your hand, then shoot some concepts. It’s a useful way to stock up your photo library with alterative images and ones that sell just as well, if not more than more common subjects. Give it a go.
© Craig Roberts
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