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<\/a>When I first arrived at the hotel I took a photo of the river just before noon. It’s a photo that has no point of interest, no color, no character at all. It’s horrible. There’s just nothing interesting about it.<\/p>\n
Later that same night I was in my room reading and I saw that the sun was beginning to set and the sky was turning orange, the water was calm, and from my chair, things started looking pretty good.<\/p>\n I grabbed my camera and headed out to the balcony. I made sure to set my camera to RAW so I would have the best possible file to edit later. I composed my shot almost the same as I had earlier in the day and took another photo.<\/p>\n That’s a better image than before. The strong backlight creates silhouettes and the reflection of the sun on the water leads our eyes into the image. But the image still has issues, the color that the camera captured was not the golden sun that I was actually seeing. I’d need to make adjustments in post processing so the image matched what I was seeing with my eyes.<\/p>\n It turned my camera to the left just a bit and took a quick shot to see if I’d have any other compositional options. But as soon as the camera was turned, that beautiful backlight became side light, and all of the charm of the shot disappeared. Not only that, but the other view was just messy and uninteresting. The correct composition was definitely to shoot into the sun.<\/p>\n I ran inside and took a look at my\u00a0first sunset shot. After a bit of color correction and some minor tonality correction in Lightroom, things were looking better than the daytime photo, but the photo\u00a0still has no spark. It’s just a boring sunset shot.<\/p>\n I decided that this image really needed to be cropped to eliminate the lens flare and create a more cinematic looking image. I waited a few minutes and let the sun get a bit lower on the horizon. I used a 16:9 crop and things began to look even better. The light was a lot more diffused over the water, the river was beginning to glow.<\/p>\n Now that I had the correct scene, color, and composition I just needed one more element to create some interest. I hadn’t forgotten about the annoying tour boats that were disturbing my quiet solitude. All I needed to do now was wait until a boat passed by and everything would fall into place. I waited and just a few minutes later I got exactly what I wanted.<\/p>\n I was sitting in my hotel room in Paris. I\u2019d been given a room with semi-opaque windows on street level. The sounds of the busy Paris street outside came muffling through the walls. I could hear people talking, the screech of the brakes from a city bus, and diners chatting during their lunch hour. And then it happened, a woman waiting for the next bus sat on a ledge just outside my hotel window. When she leaned back her blurred image turned into a scene that looked like a painting by Monet; rich in color with soft edges and just a suggestion of the actual subject.<\/p>\n I grabbed my camera and began to take photos. As the buses came and went, more and more people sat in the window, and I was able to capture a series of images that I hadn\u2019t planned, or even imagined I could create.<\/p>\n The takeaway is simple: get your camera out of the bag. Keep it by your side, charged up and ready to go. This simple tip could double or triple the number of great photos you are able to take. Opportunities for great photos usually arrive unannounced. You have to be ready to capture the scene when it happens.<\/p>\n This scene of the crop duster was created just outside Frankfurt, Germany. I was taking a walk in the countryside with a friend just before sunset. The tractor had just turned on its spray as it drove away. I had just enough time to turn and capture the scene. I hadn\u2019t planned on taking any photos, but had my camera at my side \u201cjust in case\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>Be ready to shoot\u2026<\/h3>\n
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