Bench top: An Adirondack chair in the mountains

View from Mount Norquay in Banff.  Kathryn is sitting in the chair on the right.

One of the things I tell people in the photo courses I teach is to take pictures with people in them.  The reason is simple enough - the photos you keep will likely be ones that you care about, and those will have people you know in them.  Having said that, I find that landscapes are best done without people in them as they are more marketable that way.

This brings up another important point I discuss in those same classes.  When taking photos, consider the purpose and your goals for them.  Are they for memories, sharing, selling, blogging, or just because?  Each reason has its own criteria that should be considered.  For me, I will often take two photos of landscapes, one without people and one with.  The first is done both because I want to see how good I can do it and the second because it has more personal value.

Another thought has to do with operations in post.  You may have heard the term, "in post," before - it means taking the image to a pixel editing application like Photoshop and playing with it to bring out the qualities you want.  Although this can be done on jpeg and heif images, it really refers to those shot as raw files.  I have written extensively on the advantages or shooting in raw and you can look that up on my previous blogs if you like.

I mention this because you will find a significant difference between the two shots my blog is about.  If you look at the right back leg of the chair, you will notice something is in the one on the right that is missing from the other on the left.  I used photoshop to edit the cable out as it produces a much more attractive image.  That one is more likely to be used commercially than the other and I didn't bother with it on that one.

Whatever your purpose in taking photos, the most important thing to do is to have fun.  Enjoy what you do, and do what you enjoy.  Photography for me is a way of living and interacting with the world around me.  It's one of the reasons I shoot - it's who I am.

Thanks for reading.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com

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