Hi, everybody. Welcome to Episode 18 of the photography explained podcast. In this episode, what are the qualities of a good photo?
I'm your host, Rick, and each week I will try to explain one photographic thing to you in plain English in less than 10 minutes without the irrelevant details. My aim is to explain things in just enough detail to help us with our photography and no more.
Okay, let's get straight into this one. So what are the qualities of a good photo?
I'm going to give you a list - this is called the answer.
A good photo has some or all of the following qualities.
- Is interesting
- Captures a moment
- Makes the viewer want to know more
- Tells a story
- Is well composed
- Has depth and balance
- Has no distractions
- Has good light
- Is technically correct
- Has accurate colours
- Has correct focus
- Has correct depth of field
- Is subtly processed
- And finally, and most importantly, looks natural.
Okay, if you do a Google search for this query, what are the qualities of a good photo, you'll get a huge variety of answers. This is my answer. This is my list.
Let's have a quick look in a little bit more detail. Obviously not too much detail because as I hope you know by now, it's not my strong suit.
1 Interesting
Sounds obvious, but a good photo is an interesting photo. There's something in the photo that is of interest to somebody who is looking at the photo. I mentioned in a previous episode that no amount of effort or emotional attachment in a photograph will influence somebody who doesn't know you or know anything about the photo if all they got to look at is the photo.
2 Captures a moment
A good photo needs to be interesting, capture a moment. I'm not really capturing moments, I'm capturing buildings.
But I'm also a travel and landscape photographer when I do catch moments. It's called sunrise and sunset and a few bits in between. But this also refers to obviously any interactions between people. Rather than having people just staring at the camera, capturing a moment between two people is so much more interesting.
3 Make the viewer want to know more
The idea is that when somebody looks at your photo, they look at it and the first time they go yeah, that's nice. But they stay there, they stay looking at it because there’s things in there that they want to explore. If they just look at a photo, and then move on to the next one, or as in the modern digital world, swipe up or down depending on which social media hellhole we're talking about. That's what happens.
So make people want to know more, make them want to look and study it.
4 Tell a story
What does that mean? Tell a story? Well, again, an interesting photo, it tells you something. Say looking at say, okay, it's a tree, you know, telling a story of a tree, you need to look a little bit deeper than that. Not very well explained is it to be fair?
But I do try and tell the story, the story of a moment of building, an achievement in the completion of a construction project.
5 Well composed
Now if you've been listening to my small but perfectly formed podcast recently, you will have heard a number of episodes all about composition. So I won't go into that anymore here other than the bullet points I mentioned.
6 Depth and balance
A good photo has depth and balance, depth in the photograph. You can create depth in a photo by giving a 2D object, the photo, a sense of depth, scale, and balance, where the elements complement each other.
It's easy for me to say each other in a composition. Well, at least I can say composition after three, four podcast episodes of trying.
7 Have no distractions
Squirrel, sorry, couldn't resist that one.
Yeah, distractions, things that don't need to be in the photo. And I'm not just talking about removing everything in Photoshop. But when you take the photo, just include the things that you need to include to tell that story.
I nearly said something then that would have questioned my clean rating, so nearly apologies there.
8 Has good light
Photography is drawing with light. So good light helps make a good photo. I said this before about my architectural photography work, and my construction photography work. I don't have a choice of light, I just work with the best light that I can, but you still get light moving in different directions at different times of the day, there's still things you can do, you just need to think about it.
9-13 Technically correct
We don't expect photos to be technically incorrect, we expect them to have correct exposure, accurate colours, in focus, correct depth of field, as in a lot or not a lot depending on how you want to compose a picture, picture fixture. I'm gonna have to go get a course on editing audio due to my lack of the ability to speak English which is quite alarming.
Especially considering I'm English.
14 Is subtly processed
Now I want to say something about this. A lot of the others have been bullet points. But this isn't. This isn't something I've touched on really in my podcast so far. And it's something that I am going to get on to, there is a logic to how I construct this, you know, it's not just thrown together, even though it might seem like it.
Subtle processing
If someone looks at a photo that you created, and thinks why what a great job they did in Photoshop, then in my humble opinion, you have failed.
People should look at your photo and think, yeah, it's nice. Image processing isn't something that should stand out, the photo should stand out, the processing should bring out the best of a photo, enhance the good bits, hide the not so good bits.
The centre of the photo - make it the thing that you look at.
I have a real thing about this. I'm not particularly good with Photoshop, because I don't understand it.
What do I do in Photoshop?
I remove things. That's all I do. I don't do anything else. I do 99% of my processing in Lightroom. And probably 90% of the processing in Lightroom is done in the basic panel. Probably 75% actually, I'll come on to this another episode.
I don't want to say too much now. But I use Lightroom to just enhance what's there. And I'm stumbling over words now. Yeah, it's just I that want my photographs to look natural and also consistent from one set to another.
Like I say, you don't want somebody looking at your photo and going wow, Photoshop tastic – you just want people to look at photo, which should be presented the best you can, using the processing tools available. You can do pretty much anything you want to a photo these days. And I find that the more I learn Lightroom which I've been using since version 1.0, the more I know, the less I do, which saves me time.
I am done here
Okay, then that is Episode 18 as my cold comes back with a vengeance, which hopefully hasn't affected your listening pleasure.
Thank you
Thank you very much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please leave a nice review and rating wherever you get your podcast from and subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Tell somebody about my podcast and I will be so be grateful. Check out my website, Rick McEvoy Photography to find out more about me. If you want me to explain something, let me know. Head over to my website, check out my list of episodes. Get in touch, tell me and I will give you a name check when I do it.
This episode has been brought to you by the power of having a cold.
I’ve been Rick McEvoy, thanks again for listening and giving me 10 minutes of your valuable time. And I will see you on the next episode. Cheers from me Rick.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
photo, photoshop, lightroom, processing, photography, photograph, podcast, capturing, moment, depth, distractions, natural, story, rick, mcevoy, explained