From Snapshot to Photograph
How many times have you stood in awe at the majesty of a mighty mountain or the rawness of undulating multi-color desert hills or the hypnotic motion of ocean waves crashing against the shore? You snap some photos on your phone to share with your friends and post on your socials, but when you get back, you see that your image is actually bland and lifeless. It’s just a hill like any other or some dull looking rocks. What happened to the magical scene you had been absorbed in?
The same formation as the cover image in the header (Superstition Mountains of Arizona) with attention paid to content, lighting, and composition
That’s the difference between a snapshot and a photograph. Ok, actually those are pretty much exactly the same thing. But hear me out, for this blog let’s think of them as two different things: a snapshot as a pic you quickly snap, and a photograph as a more carefully crafted image.
So how do you go from snapshot to photograph? You don’t necessarily need all sorts of fancy and expensive camera gear (that can help a little, but not as much as you might think - a tool is only as good as the person using it). What you need are three key ingredients: content, lighting, and composition.
The Magic Triangle of photography
The Magic Triangle of Photography
If you’ve ever studied photography before, then you may have heard of the exposure triangle, which talks about the relationship between three variables that all determine your exposure for an image (shutter speed, aperture or f-stop, and ISO). Here’s another triangle that I just made up, because three is a pretty cool number. I call it the Magic Triangle.
Content — What’s Your Subject?
Isolating the Subject
First up: content. What is it that’s really capturing your attention? What’s the subject of your image going to be? If you’re looking at a mountain, is there a certain part of the mountain that you find interesting? Is it the whole mountain and its surroundings? Be intentional with what you put inside the frame, and try to keep it simple.
Try to imagine the final image and what you want it to convey. If you use a wide angle lens and take a picture of a mountain, you’ll also probably get the sky above it, some of the nearby mountains, some of the land in front of it, etc. This could convey a sense of vastness or a sense of how the mountain fits into the landscape (and since it’s a wide angle, it’ll also make the mountain seem smaller).
If you zoom in and focus on just the mountain peak, or zoom in just enough to fill the frame with the mountain and a passing cloud, then the viewer will be much more focused on that particular mountain. That could be exactly what you want if it’s an interesting mountain or if the lighting is especially amazing, or if there’s something else unique about it.
This image of fall colors reflecting in a calm lake in Acadia NP has a clear subject: the colorful yellow, orange, and red foliage, which contrasts nicely with the surrounding green trees.
This image is the same exact scene, just zoomed out and moved slightly to the left. It still has a nice reflection, but the image is less impactful because the subject isn’t really isolated. There are some rocks in the foreground, and so many trees that none of them really stand out.
As you get more advanced, you can start to explore how colors, shapes, textures, and other aspects of your subjects can influence your images, or even become subjects themselves.
Simplicity and Intentional Framing
A lot of times people will see something cool and then just snap a quick pic, without any thought about what is actually in the frame. Don’t be that person. Be intentional - basically, just give some thought to what it is you actually want to include in your picture.
Lighting — The Mood Maker
Now that you’ve got an idea of what you want your subject to be, it’s time to think about the light. Light and dark are fundamental parts of a photograph, and the lighting can make or break an image.
For outdoor photography, the golden hours (the time shortly before and after both sunrise and sunset) generally will give you the best kind of light since it’s warmer and the low angle on the horizon can create dramatic shadows and colorful skies.
The light changes very quickly close to sunrise and sunset (because of the angle of the sun relative to your position on earth). These two photos were taken less than an hour apart, with the left image taken right at the start of golden hour, and the right one taken as the sun was setting.
Mt. Shasta from Heart Lake at sunset
There’s also the blue hour, which comes just before sunrise and just after sunset, when everything takes on a blue-ish tint.
Stormy lighting at the Grand Canyon
And of course, you can get all sorts of other kinds of lighting depending on conditions (flat overcast lighting, stormy lighting, a spotlight as the sun peaks through clouds, a starburst looking right at the sun, and so on and on).
Exposure and Creative Control
Lighting plays a huge role in your final image, from conveying a mood to drawing attention to or away from something. Some photographers will have a particular image in mind and then wait hours and hours or even days or more for the lighting and conditions to be just right. Others might show up to a spot and roll with whatever conditions are there.
And of course, in addition to the actual lighting conditions outside, you can control your camera’s exposure, making darker scenes seem brighter or brighter scenes seem darker. You can also create or eliminate blur to show motion (for instance with waterfalls or moving animals). Unless you have a very specific image in mind, it’s probably a good idea to aim for a ’normal’ exposure, with the highlights not blown out and the shadows visible, that way you can have the greatest flexibility in post-processing to do what you want with the image.
There’s no right or wrong here, so have some fun with it.
Mostly clear skies at sunrise over Crater Lake NP. Without any clouds to add depth to the sky, I was able to use the sun itself to add interest. There’s also a combination of backlighting for the flowers and front-lighting for the ground, while Wizard Island and the rest of the rim remain in shadows.
Composition — Arranging the Frame
Oxbow Bend at Grand Teton NP is, in my opinion, an example of a scene that’s just so beautiful and straightforward that you can literally just show up and take a picture of it and it’ll turn out amazing. In case you’re paying attention, the river acts as a leading line, drawing your eye right to Mt. Moran.
When the Scene Does the Work
Ok, now you know what you want to take a picture of, the lighting outside is really incredible…isn’t that enough? Well, maybe. Sometimes, the scene is just so beautiful that you don’t really have to give it much thought beyond this.
But most of the time, giving some thought to composition - how the different elements in your frame are arranged - can take a pretty good image and make it a really incredible image.
Core Composition Techniques
There are lots of resources out there that go in depth into a ton of different compositional techniques and approaches, so I won’t cover them all here. But a few to get started are the rule of thirds (imagine a 3x3 grid/a tic-tac-toe board over your image, then place your subject at one of the intersections), leading lines (find naturally occurring lines, maybe a crack in the ground or a tree branch, to lead the viewer’s eye into the image), framing (use some element in the image, maybe a couple trees, to frame the actual subject, let’s say a mountain), and keeping it simple. Yes, keeping it simple is an important compositional technique - you don’t want your image to be too chaotic, so try to keep the number of ’things’ in your shot to a minimum.
Example — Leading Lines in Rocky Mountain National Park
When you start looking, lines turn up everywhere! Here’s a crack in the ice that served as a leading line at the Loch in Rocky Mountain NP on a really, really cold winter morning
Example — Framing at Burney Falls
After spending too much time trying to get a shot of Burney Falls from the same angle as a crowd of other people, I ventured off a bit and found some trees that provided amazing framing of the waterfall, giving the feeling of a waterfall oasis
Example — Foreground, Midground, Background at Mount Rainier
This image of lupine and a foggy sunrise at Mt. Rainier is a clear use of foreground (lupine wildflowers), mid-ground (the trail through the meadow), and background (the foggy trees). The trail also offered a really nice leading line.
The Three Grounds (Foreground, Midground, Background)
Also give some thought to the three “grounds” (yet another set of 3’s): foreground, middle ground, and background. For landscapes, it can be helpful to think of the foreground content as being for showing where you are or for grabbing the viewer’s attention. The middle ground can be seen as then taking the viewer’s eyes from the foreground and leading them to where you want them to go. And the background then can contain the main subject.
Viewing Angle — Break the Eye-Level Habit
Oh and one final thought about composition: viewing angle. Most of us just default to taking pictures at eye level, because that’s how we see the world. But try different perspectives: get down low to the ground, or climb a tree to get elevated. Changing your viewing angle will change how different elements of your scene are arranged and emphasized, and can create completely different images than just looking from eye level.
So there you have it, the Magic Triangle of photography. Once you find the sweet spot of a good subject, interesting lighting, and compelling composition, there’s no limit to what you can create.
