WORK THAT LOCATION TO YOUR ADVANTAGE
This article was first featured on F-stoppers.com written by Head photographer, Eric Chen.
Let's be honest, how often do we get perfect conditions where everything just simply falls in the right place?
As photographers, we are constantly finding ways to add to our images to make it interesting or to make it unique. However, in the field of advertising and commercial work where I come from, I am regularly taking out more than I was adding in. The art directors and clients would put in requests on a consistent basis to remove objects and things from the image.
WORK THAT LOCATION
This obsession with removing things in my line of work has taught me to work the location rather than the location to work for me. Instead of waiting for everything to be perfect, we can learn to work with what we have through simple image editing to remove things that will improve any image instantly. Take the below image for example. I was out shooting the new Lexus LC500 sports car and I was at this carpark where it was filled with many distracting objects. After removing them, the images became a whole lot better.
Here is another example of how a simple clean up of the road surface helps make this location work for this image.
BEFORE
AFTER
THE BEST LOCATION IS THE ONE THAT YOU MAKE THE BEST OUT OF IT
There is that saying that goes " location, location, location" and it rings true to some extent. Where you shoot affects the quality of your image. However, next time when you are at a location that is not fully ideal, take a second look and see what you can achieve through simple retouching and clean up in post production. You can even do this on your mobile phone for your Instagram images which will make it look a whole lot more professional. There are plenty of apps (e.g Snapseed or Polarr) that allows you to do a simple clean up. Do explore and try it out. I hope this simple but powerful tip will help you to open up more possibilities when you are shooting in less than ideal situations.
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