It's Jennifer Larson sharing some ideas about photography.
Whenever I post about photography, I feel compelled to share that I am not a photographer: I use either a point-and-shoot or my phone, and I do little processing of the photos after. (For the next photos, I used my iPhone 6, and I used PicTapGo, primarily Lights On, AutoColor, and Crispity.) Still, there are some things I do to make my photos look a little better.
Every summer I take pictures of my perennial gardens. The photos sustain me during the winter (and it's a lot easier to take photos of my flowers than my boys--they stand still much better!). I spend a lot of time trying to make the composition of the shots look better, and the thing I've been focusing on lately is composition. Here's how I've used contrast within the composition to make the shots more interesting:
Texture
When I take pictures, I look to combine different textures in my shots--in the above photo, the smooth daylily leaves contrast with the intricacies of the columbine blossoms.
Color
Pictures in my garden automatically have contrasting colors--the green of the foliage versus the color of the bloom. Here I captured two floral colors that contrasted sharply--the pale Siberian iris and the lush color of the peony--in addition to the green. (For anyone who has kids that are Pokemon fans like mine, does the central iris look like a Pokeman to you too? It does to me!)
Light
This is a hard one--too strong a contrast will make the image difficult to see. I took this shot of a perennial geranium in my shade bed with more dappled light. The blossom is in full light while the leaves and wood mulch are shaded. This draws more attention to the blossom.
Shape
The contrasts between the smooth, almost linear daylily leaves and the star shaped leaves of the potentilla and the even more intricately star shaped blossoms of the allium make this shot more interesting. The contrasast in shapes invites the viewer to look deeper into the image.
Background
"Background" isn't really a design term, but I thought about it with this shot. I wanted to flowers to be in the foreground, but it looked much more interesting to capture the rusted birdbath and the pale lamb's ears and the lawn in the background than to just fill the frame with peony blooms.
Thank you for visiting! I hope this gives you ideas to play around with this summer when you are taking pictures.