Getting Creative

This topic explores just a few of the ways that you can create creative images with digital camera features or traditional filters.

Depth of Field
You can alter aspects of an image by taking control of aperture and shutter speed. For example, you can adjust depth of field, or the range of the picture that’s in sharp focus, by changing the aperture. The larger the aperture, the smaller the depth of field. Depth-of-field shifts get more noticeable as you zoom in or bring the camera closer to the subject.

Playing with Light
You can trick the light meter of your camera to enhance your photo by giving it better colour and more depth. Usually your camera assesses what it sees in terms of light while you press your shutter halfway down. If you keep holding it, the camera will remember the first place you took the reading.

You can press your shutter halfway down to set the autofocus and exposure, and then point your camera in another direction while you keep holding the button halfway down. You might, for example, set the camera while aiming at a brightly lit area, and then actually shoot while aiming at a more dimly lit area, thereby producing an underexposed photo.

Zooming while shooting
Zooming while shooting can be a tricky proposition, but the effects are unreal. A sense of motion can be created by zooming with the shutter open. You have to be quick in moving your zoom in (or out if you want) while shooting. Set your shutter speed to at least 1?30.

Making flowing water turn to silk
Flowing water on rocks can be made to look like silk or flowing velvet. To achieve this, you need to film in low light, such as a shady spot or at dusk or dawn.

Once you’ve found a body of flowing water, set your camera on a tripod and frame the picture. Set your camera to the shutter priority mode and choose a slow shutter speed — for example, 1?60 of a second. Set your camera’s self-timer so that the camera doesn’t shake when you try to push the shutter button.

Release your shutter and wait for the camera to take a picture. Continue taking pictures using a slower shutter speed each time, until the flowing water looks like velvet.

Tweaking Colours with White Balance
You can use your camera’s white-balance control to give pictures a warmer or cooler tone.  In photography, the term warm colours refers to hues in the red-to-yellow range. Cool tones refers to hues in the blue-to-green range.

Although the main purpose of white balance is to enable you to record colours accurately in any lighting, you also can use the feature as a sort of warming or cooling filter, as follows:

For warmer colours, choose a white-balance setting appropriate for a light source that has a higher colour temperature than your actual light source. In bright sunlight, for example, choose the setting for flash or clouds.

For cooler colours, choose a white-balance setting appropriate for a light source that has a lower colour temperature than your actual light source. Again, on a sunny day, the incandescent or fluorescent setting would produce cooler tones.

Manipulating Colour Using filters
Filter manufacturers such as Tiffen and Kenko offer a variety of filters in various sizes to fit digital camera lenses. Camera filters help make a better picture when you are shooting during the day because the sun’s glare can affect both the colour and the details of your subjects and backgrounds. There are many types of filters, each with a specific function:

UV/skylight - Ultraviolet (UV) filters get rid of the haze and UV light that your sensor or film picks up but that you can’t see.
Polarizing - These filters reduce the sun’s glare. They also help if you’re shooting through glass. These filters give improved clarity and colour balance to your photographs.
Neutral density - These filters reduce the amount of light that gets to your lens.
Colour conversion - These filters stop certain wavelengths of light from reaching your film or sensor, thus changing the colour in your entire photo. These are actually coloured glass that you put over the lens of your camera to change the colour of your photo. Yellow works with the sun’s colour to make your shots look more vivid. Red warms up your environment. Blue enhances and adds more tones of colour to the blues of the sky and/or water.

Warming Image Colours
If changing the white balance doesn’t produce the warming effect you’re after, place a warming filter over your camera lens. These filters cut down on the amount of blue in the light and give your image a rosy cast. Although warming filters are most often used to warm skin tones in portraits, they can also be used in scenic shots to approximate the light that you get around sunrise and sunset.

Making Gray Skies Blue
On days when the sky appears grey, you may be able to capture an image with a little more blue by using a polarizing filter.  The effectiveness of the filter depends on the angle of camera, sun, and subject. If skies are completely overcast, the filter is not effective and will only reduce the amount of light coming into your camera.

Bear in mind that a polarizing filter not only affects sky colour, but also may eliminate reflections in glass and other shiny surfaces.