To find patterns, sometimes you need the chance your position, angle or wait for light to change it’s angle. as an example; dunes in a dessert or a beach that shaped by the wind cannot create a pattern in noon, but in the afternoon when the rays of sun hits them with a low angle, play of highlight and shadow create patterns for photographers to create great pictures by using them. Also in a rainy day you maybe you won’t notice the pattern that created by the umbrellas of people walking in the street while you are walking with them. But if you go up to 2nd or 3rd floor of a building you can see the pattern. Close-ups are also good for finding the patterns, especially natural ones, such as the curls and twists of a flower’s leafs, seeds etc.

Try to isolate the pattern from all other surrounding elements to create a feeling that repetition is infinite and extending beyond the frame. Tele lenses are useful for isolating the design from the surroundings. They allow you to zoom in and exclude any unwanted elements even from a long distance.

But honestly only taking pictures of patterns is not that creative (imho). But using it in your pictures with another element of photography or with another composition technique can make you achieve great results in your pictures. If you are following my web site for a time, you probably know that i really like Gilad Benari’s pictures and understanding of photography. He is a photography master that uses patterns very wisely and aesthetically. Here there are some examples for using patterns in photography from Gilad Benari; (as i told i didn’t ask for permission to publish his photographs in my web site so i’m just giving the links to his deviantArt account.)

Corridor of Faith - Gilad Benari

(Sorry only one example for now, there’s a problem with my internet provider, I’ll add other examples as soon as possible)

Seeing a scene in photograph is different than seeing the same scene in person. When you see the scene in person actually you easily understand the sizes of the objects in the scene, because you are looking from eye-level from a person ( it is you in this case ). This allows you to compare the things with your size and understand how big or small they are. But in photographs actually a huge building or structure can be photographerd from sky and look like as it is small (if there are no people, cars etc. around it) or a tiny model of a ship can look enormous. Bur if you include some clues for your viewers, you can tell them how big or small is this subject. It is better to show it with examples;

In the picture above, you see the top floors of an old skyscraper in New York City. there’s no clue in this picture to tell the viewers how big or tall is the building. SO this is a mistake in terms of establishing the size. (Actually i didn’t want to show the size in this picture, instread i wanted to show it smaller than it is. I made this mistake on purpose, so it is not a mistake, kind of…)

But in this picture mountain-biker help us to understand the size of the rock that he is standing on.

Simplicity is really important in photography. It can be described as avoiding any unnecessary objects from the frame. Especially messy backgrounds, and unnecessary objects on the foreground make confusing images. Your pictures should reveal a single subject or idea and you should be able to define your picture with a sentence. If people ask you “where this picture is taken?” it is ok but if they ask you “what is it about?” and “what is the subject?” than it means you’re not doing well enough.

Ask yourself “what is your subject” before taking the picture. Than think about if the objects in the foreground or background are really necessary for the picture that you want to take. If they are not, avoid them by changing position or angle or both. Simplifying or isolating your subject in other words, will improve the quality of your pictures you’ll see it after a couple of tries. You may often have to change your position and angle to do that. Taking picture from a higher ground can help you avoid unnecessary and confusing backgrounds. Also getting on your knees or lying to the ground helps you get rid of unwanted objects and let you use only sky as a background. Also you can use depth of field as a tool for getting rid of busy backgrounds. ( To learn more about Depth of Field read my related article.) Lower f values like f/3.5 etc. that make the aperture of the camera wider, decrease the range of depth of field and making everywhere flu or blur except the point or subject that focused on. So you can use depth of field to avoid busy backgrounds too. One last tip about simplifying, is taking silhouette pictures of your subject. (To learn more about silhouettes, read my related article.)

The picture below is an example for simplifying your pictures and isolating the subject from any unnecessary objects in the scene. The picture is taken by my dear friend Emrah Fahri Gursoy;

Getting close to your subject often helps photographers to come up with better results in terms of photography. Getting close and filling the frame with the subject can turn the simplest things in to a good picture. You can either get close to the subject physically or zoom in. It is your choice, Although they have different effects of the picture. But it is a more complicated subject. Since i wrote “BASIC” in the title I’m not going to write about the differences in this post, maybe in another post.

Anyway, You can view the example for “getting close” below. It is not a masterpiece in terms of photography. But it doesn’t look bad either. There’s no additional lights filters reflectors etc. , just the light coming from my window. I even didn’t change the position of the guitar that is an everyday object of my room. I just took the picture by only zooming in, nothing else. What I’m trying to say is Even the most simple object can make a good picture. By zooming in or getting close you can avoid the unwanted background and objects around your subject. In this picture, i avoided the messy room of mine which won’t make a nice background image by zooming in.

Exposure

Motion In Photography

Night Photography

Examples for Long Shutter Times and Motion;

This pictures are also available in my “Photography” gallery, under the “City and Urban” category.

Taking pictures in a rainy day can bring good results in terms of photography, but there are also some problems that makes it harder to take pictures in a rainy day. Photographers have to protect their camera from water drops. Some cameras need better protection, especially cheaper models. For example Canon 40D has a weather proof seal that prevents water, dust etc. flow into the camera (that doesn’t mean it’s water proof and take pictures underwater without proper extra gear.), but cameras like 400 doesn’t have this ability so you should be more protective while using this kind of cameras.

Easiest solution for the rain problem is bringing a friend with you to the place where you are going to take pictures. She/He can hold an umbrella on you, camera or any other equipment. Simple and easy. If there’s nobody to help you we should consider other options. Such as covering the camera with a waterproof material such as plastic bag. In this one we need a plastic bag, scissors and a elastic band. Cut a hole on the plastic bag that is just big enough for the lens you are using. Poke the lens from this hole, and attach and fix the plastic bag to the lens so water cannot enter into the bag. Is must look like something like this; (sorry for the low quality pictures)

Another alternative to this plastic bag, camera protection system, is buying an underwater bag or case for your camera. This way is more expensive compared to plastic bag, but more reliable and professional. In this one i advice you to have a water proof bag for your camera, it is much cheaper than a underwater casing. Also having a waterproof bag will be more than enough to protect your camera from rain. Because these bags are designed for use under water. So in the land there’s no water pressure only droplets of rain. So it wont be a problem for the waterproof bag to protect your camera from gear since it even works under water. Underwater camera cases are generally for more professional purposes and they are designed to work under high water pressure of deep waters.

Don’t afraid to go out and take pictures in the rain.

In a rainy day cities can provide us beautiful scenes to capture. Especially reflection of the buildings and city lights on the wet ground is really beautiful. However this kind of pictures are taken a lot lately, there are too many examples for the city or street pictures that include reflection of buildings on the wet ground. But still you can find something creative and different, just keep trying. In the links below you can find some examples about photographing the reflections on the ground;

Boxed in - Gilad Benari

City Prisoner - Gilad Benari

Undercover Agent - Gilad Benari

Also landscapes can be stunning in the rain. high density of clouds, a dark sky and highly saturated colors are what makes the landscape pictures amazing during rain. If you want to get more saturation in your pictures you can use a polarizer filter.

After the Rain - Andrew H

After the Rain - Ersilio

Rain Is Gone - Dirk Barchmann

Norway 45 - Maciej Duczynski

Road - Dennis Sibeijn

And this is one of my pictures that taken under rain; “Gloom and Desolation”

Tomorrow I’ll write about how to protect your camera and equipment in the rain

I’m an amateur photographer and my main purpose was reaching a larger audience to show my work. But it was a quite busy year for me so i couldn’t produce quality pictures as much as i wanted.

In the end, ermany.net is a growing website that contains a mixture of my work on photography, tips, information and reviews. I really appreciate your attention to the ermany.net and thank all of you for your support. This is what i want to write in my 100th post. I’ll keep writing and producing as long as you are there to view my works. Once again thank you all…

Erman

Rules: Read the rules carefully. If your picture is violating the rules, it will be disqualified no matter how great it is.

Enter Your Best Work: Enter the contest with your best work. If there are pictures that you don’t think they are good enough for the competition do not enter with them.

Be Original: Your pictures should be impressive and different if you want them to qualify in the competition. Try to think outside of the box. ( But first you must find a box to think outside of and this requires experience and experiments.)

Think About It; Think about the subject of the competition. Firs ideas may be too obvious and you can ignore them. Think something original, approach the subject with a different look.

Do not Enter Every Competition: Don’t enter every competition you see. Choose the ones that exciting you, so you can be more passionate and creative while you are working on this subject. In addition some contest especially “Internet contests” (some of them are good though) does not worth even trying. In an Internet contest i uploaded my work and i saw a lot of picture “similar” to the one i took uploaded next day.

Impacts: Use color, shapes, expressions and humour wisely in your work so it can catch the eyes of jury and other viewers.

Exposure, Focus and Composition; These are the basic concepts of photography, but they are really important at competitions. There should be no mistake about these concepts in your work or forget about winning the competition.

Uniqueness; Try to find something that no one else would think about it.

Prints; Do not forget that the digital pictures that you took does not look the same on the computer screen and printed on paper. A picture that looks fine and well exposured, can be too dark after printing and this will cost you in competition.

Also don’t forget that, photography magazine competitions are hard to win due to high standards of entries. You have a better chance to win the competitions run by non-photographic magazines and non-photographic companies.