(Un)Repetitive

Since I'm down a camera, and am procrastinating on things that I should be doing, I decided to do something I've never done before. I'm going to go through a few of my favorite photos from the past few years in detail. Explaining my thought process, technical stuff, editing, and photo-geek stuff. I hope you enjoy it. Today I'm going to to go through some of my lake photos. Taking pictures at the lake is a particular challenge for me because we go to the lake all the time, like most weekends in the summer. This means that it is easy to get a a lot of good shots but few great ones. How do you make something really special out of the repetitive or ordinary? This is also very relevant when shooting famous places but I will address that later.

So for this picture I intentionally broke one of the most basic rules of photography, the rule of thirds. I decided to put the subject (my brother) right in the center of frame. The reason that it works is that the spray of the water creates a light and dark theme (from left to right). In order to better show this theme I wanted to process it as a black and white. I also increased the contrast for the same reason. I think that creates a really nice, striking, image from a very normal one to something really special.

This photo showcases a different way to shake up an average picture, shifting focus. I always shoot wakeboarding on manual focus since the wakeboarder is a set distance from the boat (the length of the rope). This let me focus on the rope as my brother was left behind in a crash. This let the focus be somewhere very unusual with the "action" in the background which leads to a nice and unusual picture.

One of my favorite lake pictures, ever. This shows how you use back light to your advantage, as well as the importance of shooting on manual. Instead of  getting frustrated with "bad" lighting it's better to get creative. Here I wanted an outline of the wakeboarder (my sister) with a nice lit up trail behind her. It led to just a beautiful result. I made sure to keep my exposure low and was fortunate enough to get the rope lit up as well. This also illustrates another point. If you're shooting the same thing over and over change it up, zoom in zoom out, change angles. This shot is much more powerful than if I had cropped it close. In post I took the saturation down a bit so as to better focus on that awesome light. Cannot say how proud I am of this shot.

And finally sometimes it is better to be lucky than good. If you shoot the same thing enough times sometimes you get something fun, such as a massive splash. In post I brought down the saturation in order to really focus on the action.

Let me know what you think of this kind of post. Do you love it, hate it, no feeling whatsoever? However you feel I'd love your feedback.