Knowing the technical aspects of photography is a big part of a good image—but so is simply using your eyes to identify, compose and capture a beautiful scene. Here’s the story behind this weeks featured photo, and why he chose this particular perspective.
Part of capturing a great image is knowing your equipment. How to adjust depth of field. How to prevent blur in low light. But a big part of it has nothing to do with the equipment, and everything to do with the eye that’s behind that viewfinder (or screen, as it may be).
Tyler Mantering’s eye for color and composition is what grabs the viewer in The Lantern Festival, enough so to earn the designation of Foto of the Week.
“You have a great eye for color,” said Beginner’s Guide to DSLR Photography tutor Teren Oddo. “This is good compositionally as well…your leading lines are fantastic and really draws us in.”
The composition was also the hardest element of the shot for Tyler, however. “The main problem I encountered when taking this photograph was deciding among the variety of ways in which I could have framed it,” he said.
“I first tried to photograph just the lanterns on the ceiling, but I lost a sense of the activity happening just below it. By including a bit of the pedestrians below while featuring the lanterns for the top 2/3 of the picture, I gave the picture a sense of life while not detracting from the main subject, the lanterns.”
To freeze the moment inside dim lighting conditions, Tyler used a 640 ISO, a 1/200 second shutter speed and an f/2.8 aperture on his Nikon D5100.
His tutor suggested capturing the scene with a broader depth of field, to keep more of the image in focus. The lower the aperture number is, the more of that out-of-focus blur an image has. An aperture of f/8 or greater would have left more of the colorful scene sharply focused, though he would’ve needed to compensate with a higher ISO to balance the exposure without blurring the people.
But, Tyler certainly nailed the perspective on this shot, standing in a way that the line of lanterns leaders the viewers eye along the colorful lanterns. By keeping the people in the shot, the image is also left with a sense of the busyness of the lantern festival.
Nice work, Tyler!
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