The Daytripper

By Paul W. Ross
Special to the Coastal Point

I’ve been fooling around with photography for about a half-century now (read that as “old codger”). Recently I’ve had to come to grips with some of the issues of digital photography, as I’m making the transition from film to digital photography. With a little understanding of some basic ideas, you can make your photographs from your trips much more interesting, be they film or digital.

There are two basic technologies for obtaining an image; film, which has been around in some form for well over 100 years, and digital, which is of more recent vintage. It seems likely that digital photography stands to displace film photography, as far as most of us are concerned. A recent article I read says that Eastman Kodak plans to move to over 75 percent digital business within the next few years.

In light of that, let’s concentrate on digital photography in this article.

The most common storage formats for digital images used on the Web are called JPEG. JPEG is the image compression standard developed by the Joint Photographic Experts Group, in case you ever wanted to know. It works best on natural images, such as people, or outdoor scenes, versus images such as cartoons and line drawings.

The JPEG image algorithm is what we call “lossy,” meaning that we achieve data compression by discarding unused or unneeded information. Why can we get away with this? The eye doesn’t need a lot of fine detail, nor does it need a lot of color information to produce what appears to be a satisfactory image.

When you take pictures with a digital camera, you can often set the degree of resolution and compression. For sending photos over the Internet, don’t use any more resolution than you need, and take a more compressed mode, if possible. In this way, the files that you send will be of manageable size, and won’t take so long to send. This is especially important if you have a dialed network connection. Do we hear the voice of experience here?

Now, what about taking good photographs? Like many things in this world, there are some basics of good photography that apply, from the days of Mathew Brady and wet plates to Eastman Kodak’s cameras to the most modern digital cameras. These techniques can make for much better photography. They are not carved in stone, so to speak, but provide an excellent starting point for making better photographs. The classic compositional rule is “the rule of thirds.”

Imagine dividing the image into thirds, both horizontally and vertically, like a tic-tac-toe board. Place the main subject in one of the four locations where a horizontal line intersects with a vertical line. This strategy is surprisingly effective. If you look through any magazine or watch any movie film or video with this principle in mind, you will be surprised to find it used so frequently. An off-center subject is much more pleasing than one simply plopped in the center.

A powerful alternative to framing our image is to “crop” the image, showing only the main subject, or maybe only part of it. Showing only part of the main subject will give you more compositional freedom, probably without losing meaning. Careful cropping lends to less-busy compositions.

Clean, simple compositions are particularly import for images destined for the Web, where low resolution can compromise the effectiveness of visually busy photos that seemed fine as larger conventional photographic images. Cropping can be done after scanning the image or reading it in from your digital camera. However, keep in mind that we may very well loose some resolution in the results. This is a case for capturing the digital image at a fairly high resolution, as we may throw some away.

Visual continuity in an image in important if there is more than one visually prominent feature of the photograph. Does the eye naturally move from one feature to the next? Or, are your eyes led off the picture plane? Appreciating how the viewer’s eye will move around the image is a useful skill to develop. If the image doesn’t seem sufficiently engaging, revisit our “rule of thirds.”

The “rule of thirds” plays an important part in such things as landscapes. Don’t place the horizon line in horizontal center of the picture! Move the horizon line near the top of the picture frame, or near the bottom. Try to get some clouds in the sky, and consider using a circular polarizing filter to darken the sky for greater “punch.”

Now that we’ve made you into professional photographers and you can have the most wonderful summer photographs! Where did I leave my camera, tripod, and the extra film? Maybe I ought to take the digital camera instead. More toys ...

How do we get there?

Go to your local “big box” discount store or local pharmacy and stock up on film, batteries, memory chips, and sunscreen! Head for the open road!