​Composition and focus of foggy scenery photography

In many cases, extreme weather conditions are easier to take good pictures, canvas prints but also can bring more shock to everyone. But it can be difficult to shoot in extreme weather conditions. Next, Mr. Liu, a chinese-canadian professional landscape photographer, will give us the composition and focusing skills of fog photography.

Composition of foggy photography

Before discussing the composition of foggy shots, canvas australia let's take a look at the nature of the light, which diffuses in foggy colors against red light for half an hour before sunrise, so the composition also includes the warm and cold tones of red and blue. Half an hour after sunrise, the red color disappears and is replaced by the golden light. Therefore, it is the most important to look for the burning sense of side backlight or the composition of light along with the golden light. This is also a good time to shoot the dundar phenomenon beam modeling. Shooting in foggy days without sunshine is due to low light ratio and low contrast, so the whole picture forms a uniform tone. At this time, if the color of this tone is selected as the composition center, strong contrast and visual impact will be formed. Let's look at each of these cases.

First of all, the red light half an hour before sunrise is matched with fog. The composition of this time is relatively simple. As long as the contrast between red and blue is grasped, generally speaking, the composition will not be wrong, large canvas photo prints such as the work in figure 1. The composition of this work is a regular and regular stratification, starting from the form of fog, with red as the main tone before sunrise spreading down, red, blue, white and green. In terms of scenery, trees, houses, telephone poles and so on are all objects rendered by fog on the same horizontal line, which are also easy to find in our daily life. Compared with this simple way of composition, the light half an hour before sunrise also provides us with the advantage of color dispersing into the whole picture. Therefore, we should pay attention to the individuals standing in the fog when composing, and make them look like floating in the sky with the background color of the environment, as shown in figure 2. In this work, I found two young deer eating grass. The environment they were in was just covered by fog, and because of the light, the whole picture was stained with orange, as if they were floating in the air, with the taste of fairyland. Therefore, looking for fixed or single objects in the fog is also the key to composition.

In addition to the above mentioned two kinds of compositions, we can also find the fog been chance to capture the form of fog itself, such as the mist of the golden gate bridge big scene, or of the wonders of huangshan ZhuFeng in thick fog is like concealed, these large compositions was relatively easy, as long as people in this position, basically can't miss it. Picture 3 shows the picture overlooking the forest with dense fog.

The golden light half an hour after sunrise with fog is the "burning sensation" we mentioned when shooting against the light, as shown in figure 4. The rising mist in this work appears as a golden flame as soon as the sunlight shines on it. This composition Angle is also a side backlight; otherwise there would be no effect of seeing the light through the fog. Figure 5 is also a similar concept.

However, if you carefully observe these two works, you will find that the original scenery is taken, that is to say, if we shoot the fog film against the light and only focus on the color and shape of the fog itself, it is not enough to catch the audience's eye. More importantly, we need to find "real" objects, whether man-made objects like houses or natural objects like trees and stones. These motionless objects can be used as coordinates and references in the mist, so that the eyes can have the anchor point to stay. In addition, color should also be considered. For example, red and green decorations in the golden fog are good ways to create conflicts and provide stories.

In the fog of half an hour after sunrise, we can also do shun guang shooting, it is not difficult to find that shun guang shooting fog film scenery itself must be colorful, fog is to create a kind of atmosphere, play the role of the finishing point. Another example is shown in figure 6, where the fog is not thick, but the effect is there. Without the participation of fog, this work is also very good scenery, and a little rising fog makes the scenery more picturesque.

In addition, it is better to look for pools in foggy days to form a reflection, which is not only applicable to the reflection of the scenery itself, but also to take the magic of fog, we can see figure 7 as an example. The work presents a golden and dreamlike feeling due to the dense fog covering the sun. The reflection from the quiet lake water makes the whole picture full of golden color, which makes people confused between the reflection and the reality, which achieves a very good artistic effect. In addition, we can also include the sun in the composition, which is easier to shoot because the sun exposure is weakened by the thick fog, as shown in figure 8. This composition puts the sun on the line of the fence to make a cut, which is completely due to the mist weakening the over-exposure part, so we can place the sun at will, which is difficult to achieve in the weather without fog.

For foggy days with no light, the composition should be considered from another Angle. Previously, we mentioned that the light ratio in dark foggy days is low and the contrast is low, so we should choose the color that pops out of the overall tone of the picture as the main composition point. Then, how to achieve this? See figure 9 for an example. In this work taken in the foggy sky, the sun is covered and there is no wonderful red or golden light. At this time, we should look for red or yellow as the main body in contrast to the overall blue tone. The two red houses in the picture are very colorful in the overall tone. Of course, due to the low contrast, it is hard to see the red color in the photos straight from the camera, so we need to strengthen it later. Look at figure 10. In this picture, the house is flooded by the overall grey tone of the picture, but the red paint on the eaves is very jumping. Just imagine if the house is full of grey tone like the surrounding, the audience's line of sight will lack a foothold. After finding the house, the composition should be selected with the purpose of highlighting the color. Therefore, the front shooting should expose the red, either in the center or at the edge, but the grey tone should be full of the picture, and the main body should be pulled away to emphasize the main body.

The general focusing rule of shooting large scene scenery film is to find an object slightly closer to the lens for focusing, which is mainly because the scenery itself is far away from the shooting point, so there is no need to consider the specific focus. But in the case of dense fog, there may be deviation focus, appear even in case, this is due to the camera's autofocus and manual focus support were taken by looking for the contrast of the object, which is a clear line, clear tone junction, etc., however, we also mentioned fog in front of the contrast is very low, this may cause the camera to find can't focus in the end. There are generally two ways to deal with this situation, the first way is to use manual focus, the focus ring is placed in an infinite position, to a relatively small aperture, such as 8, according to the concept of hyper focus, the distant scenery must be in the focus. The advantage of this approach is that there is no need for judgment and the problem is solved simply by twisting the focus ring to infinity. So what if the object is not very far away and we have to check if it is in focus? In this case, we still need to use manual focus and try to turn the focus ring to the auxiliary focus circle. If we can't get the auxiliary focus hint, the second method we can use is to look directly with the eyes. This method should be the last choice in focusing, because most of the time it is not easy for the eye to judge whether the scene is in focus, floating frame canvas so it is a better way to watch repeatedly and check with the LCD screen behind the camera.