In this article, my goal is to explain some basic methods of photography and setting up shots, as well as photo editing after the fact. I do not intend to go into detail on camera settings; for the purposes of this article, I will be using the automatic mode on my camera.
There are no hard-and-fast rules for photography. I encourage you to play around with everything mentioned here and more. I have broken every "rule" mentioned here and still gotten some fair shots. Don't be afraid to experiment: these are just some ideas to get you going with the aim of high quality images.
Before we delve into the setup, I'm going to quickly cover some terms and methods.
Foreground, Middleground, and Background
The foreground, middleground, and background are important parts of a well set-up image. Using all three—or at least two—of these sections is fairly simple to do and lends improved depth to an image by making it seem 3-D rather than flat. They are exactly what the name implies: the front, middle, and back 'sections' in an image, split by objects, scenery, or implied depth.
Using all three of these sectors draws your eye in and eliminates the tendency towards a flat picture.
Framing
Framing is the use of light or an object to block out parts of an image and draw attention to a subject. It has many other benefits, including context, a sense of depth, and lending a sort of mystery to the photograph. It is often, but not always, in the foreground.
Photo examples of framing:
The Rule of Thirds
The rule of thirds is a simple tip that makes all the difference in your photos. It is done by dividing your photo, either with imaginary lines or your viewfinder, into nine parts. Three each direction. Place points of interest on the places where the lines intersect, and the natural separations that occur in an image along one of the horizontal or vertical lines.
The eye is naturally drawn to these locations; don't centre the subject/points of interest or your image will often seem too rigid and not pleasing to look at.
In this image below I placed the end and side of the road right along the left vertical and top horizontal lines.
Balance
There are multiple kinds of balance that are used in artwork and photography. The first is symmetrical balance. If you divided the image in half right along the centre line both halves would appear identical. While a good standby for, say, a background image on your computer, it is not visually exciting and gets to be quite dull after a while.
Radial balance has the elements spread outwards from one place. This is a good balance to use if you wish to really emphasize the focal point.
My personal favourite is asymmetrical balance. It is much more interesting and draws your eye back for a second look. If you divided a photo with asymmetrical balance into two pieces, they would not be identical. Despite this, it seems balanced to your eye. It is done by multiple factors that influence perceived weight within the image, making the "weight" seem equal on both sides.
1. Value: Dark parts of an image are heavier than the light parts.
2. Size: smaller objects seem to carry less weight.
3. Texture: heavily textured things carry more weight than blurred or smooth things.
4. Colour: Warm colours are heavier than cool tones.
5. Quantity: One large object paired with several smaller ones can keep a nice balance.
When these things are done harmoniously with each other, they give an image both balance and excitement.
One other not used in chicken photography is crystallographic balance. It is formed by repetition within the image, like, for instance, a honeycomb. By repeating the same shape over and over again it seems balanced. It doesn't have a specific focal point.
Backgrounds
The most common mistake that appears in photographs is a bad background. No matter how stunning your chicken is, how perfect the lighting is, or how precisely they're posed, it is still difficult to capture a good picture without a good background. By changing your depth of field manually (or by using an automatic setting) you can blur out much of the background and soften messy backgrounds.
For outdoor photos:
1. Try to have minimal dirt in the image. Brown is not an exciting colour, especially if overused.
2. No poop. It's the first thing in an image that one's eye will be drawn to.
3. Try and match the background to the chicken. My goal is a decent amount of contrast without washing out any part of the image.
4. If you need a good background but don't have one, try looking up from underneath the chicken to the sky. This is best done on a day with dramatic colouring in the clouds.
5. Avoid pictures in the coop. The average coop is not clean or well lit, making it difficult to procure high-quality images. One frequent exception is using the edge of the coop as framing, like I did in the shot up in the framing section.
6. If photographing in a flock, avoid random body parts from other chickens getting in on the action. In most cases, it's a distraction.
7. No trash, garbage cans, etc in your picture. I've had more pictures than I can count spoiled by a bright red treat container in the corner, or empty feed bags stacked behind the birds.
9. Minimal chicken wire\hardware cloth. It's distracting, ugly, and a boring background. Yes, you can use it artistically, but by far, most of the images I've run across with this issue do not in any way qualify as artistic.
For indoor photos:
My favourite prop has to be a bath towel. It provides a clean and simple background ideal for focusing on the chicken. I like a light purple or green, it goes well with many different colours and breeds of chickens. I will sometimes use flowers in an image if I think it needs more interest.
Light and Weather Conditions
My favourite time to take pictures is the golden hour just before sunset or sunrise. It has a soft light that doesn't give any glare to the image, and the shadow patterns it can throw really help upgrade your image as a whole. I find it to be much more interesting than plain overcast lighting with no brighter bits.
This is the kind of lighting I'm looking for.
With photographing animals, nice weather is often ideal. In landscape photography, the generally accepted rule is the more exotic the weather the better, but this doesn't work well with chickens. Some things such as puddles may work in your favour if it's no longer raining, but often the birds will be soaked and lend more of a ratty quality than most folks are going for in their photography.
Photo Editing
This is a remarkably controversial topic in the photography world. Some feel photo editing is like lying or cheating, making things appear better than they are. Me, I think that minimal photo editing is a good tool to have in your bag of photography tricks and it has saved many an image. Just note that some contests may have requirements of no editing.
I use PicMonkey for my photo edits. It is easier to use than Photoshop or Gimp, making it a good choice for the amateur that has no clue what they're doing. It does require a subscription if you wish to save your edits.
As an example for purposes of demonstration, say that you're taking pictures in low light and you end up with an image that isn't blurry and has the subject in a decent pose, but it's too dark. Using the automatic exposure adjust really helps eliminate some of that gloom that can wreck pictures. The curve tool (next to clone, see later images) also changes exposure and is better than changing one element at a time. Is one part of an image too light? Use "Burn" to give a subtle darkening. Is one too dark? "Dodge" improves the balance.
My favourite feature (premium members only) is the "Clone" tool. It's really helpful for getting photobombers out of an otherwise great image.
Re-select a distance and angle frequently, or it will end up looking repetitive and odd, as shown in the light brown area.
Thanks for reading, and comment below if you have any suggestions for improvement or points of uncertainty. Remember, photography is an art, not a science, and there are more exceptions than rules. This article is intended merely as a collection of suggestions to function as a starting point.
There are no hard-and-fast rules for photography. I encourage you to play around with everything mentioned here and more. I have broken every "rule" mentioned here and still gotten some fair shots. Don't be afraid to experiment: these are just some ideas to get you going with the aim of high quality images.
Before we delve into the setup, I'm going to quickly cover some terms and methods.
Foreground, Middleground, and Background
The foreground, middleground, and background are important parts of a well set-up image. Using all three—or at least two—of these sections is fairly simple to do and lends improved depth to an image by making it seem 3-D rather than flat. They are exactly what the name implies: the front, middle, and back 'sections' in an image, split by objects, scenery, or implied depth.
Using all three of these sectors draws your eye in and eliminates the tendency towards a flat picture.
Framing
Framing is the use of light or an object to block out parts of an image and draw attention to a subject. It has many other benefits, including context, a sense of depth, and lending a sort of mystery to the photograph. It is often, but not always, in the foreground.
Photo examples of framing:
The Rule of Thirds
The rule of thirds is a simple tip that makes all the difference in your photos. It is done by dividing your photo, either with imaginary lines or your viewfinder, into nine parts. Three each direction. Place points of interest on the places where the lines intersect, and the natural separations that occur in an image along one of the horizontal or vertical lines.
The eye is naturally drawn to these locations; don't centre the subject/points of interest or your image will often seem too rigid and not pleasing to look at.
In this image below I placed the end and side of the road right along the left vertical and top horizontal lines.
Balance
There are multiple kinds of balance that are used in artwork and photography. The first is symmetrical balance. If you divided the image in half right along the centre line both halves would appear identical. While a good standby for, say, a background image on your computer, it is not visually exciting and gets to be quite dull after a while.
Radial balance has the elements spread outwards from one place. This is a good balance to use if you wish to really emphasize the focal point.
My personal favourite is asymmetrical balance. It is much more interesting and draws your eye back for a second look. If you divided a photo with asymmetrical balance into two pieces, they would not be identical. Despite this, it seems balanced to your eye. It is done by multiple factors that influence perceived weight within the image, making the "weight" seem equal on both sides.
1. Value: Dark parts of an image are heavier than the light parts.
2. Size: smaller objects seem to carry less weight.
3. Texture: heavily textured things carry more weight than blurred or smooth things.
4. Colour: Warm colours are heavier than cool tones.
5. Quantity: One large object paired with several smaller ones can keep a nice balance.
When these things are done harmoniously with each other, they give an image both balance and excitement.
One other not used in chicken photography is crystallographic balance. It is formed by repetition within the image, like, for instance, a honeycomb. By repeating the same shape over and over again it seems balanced. It doesn't have a specific focal point.
Backgrounds
The most common mistake that appears in photographs is a bad background. No matter how stunning your chicken is, how perfect the lighting is, or how precisely they're posed, it is still difficult to capture a good picture without a good background. By changing your depth of field manually (or by using an automatic setting) you can blur out much of the background and soften messy backgrounds.
For outdoor photos:
1. Try to have minimal dirt in the image. Brown is not an exciting colour, especially if overused.
2. No poop. It's the first thing in an image that one's eye will be drawn to.
3. Try and match the background to the chicken. My goal is a decent amount of contrast without washing out any part of the image.
4. If you need a good background but don't have one, try looking up from underneath the chicken to the sky. This is best done on a day with dramatic colouring in the clouds.
5. Avoid pictures in the coop. The average coop is not clean or well lit, making it difficult to procure high-quality images. One frequent exception is using the edge of the coop as framing, like I did in the shot up in the framing section.
6. If photographing in a flock, avoid random body parts from other chickens getting in on the action. In most cases, it's a distraction.
7. No trash, garbage cans, etc in your picture. I've had more pictures than I can count spoiled by a bright red treat container in the corner, or empty feed bags stacked behind the birds.
9. Minimal chicken wire\hardware cloth. It's distracting, ugly, and a boring background. Yes, you can use it artistically, but by far, most of the images I've run across with this issue do not in any way qualify as artistic.
For indoor photos:
My favourite prop has to be a bath towel. It provides a clean and simple background ideal for focusing on the chicken. I like a light purple or green, it goes well with many different colours and breeds of chickens. I will sometimes use flowers in an image if I think it needs more interest.
Light and Weather Conditions
My favourite time to take pictures is the golden hour just before sunset or sunrise. It has a soft light that doesn't give any glare to the image, and the shadow patterns it can throw really help upgrade your image as a whole. I find it to be much more interesting than plain overcast lighting with no brighter bits.
This is the kind of lighting I'm looking for.
With photographing animals, nice weather is often ideal. In landscape photography, the generally accepted rule is the more exotic the weather the better, but this doesn't work well with chickens. Some things such as puddles may work in your favour if it's no longer raining, but often the birds will be soaked and lend more of a ratty quality than most folks are going for in their photography.
Photo Editing
This is a remarkably controversial topic in the photography world. Some feel photo editing is like lying or cheating, making things appear better than they are. Me, I think that minimal photo editing is a good tool to have in your bag of photography tricks and it has saved many an image. Just note that some contests may have requirements of no editing.
I use PicMonkey for my photo edits. It is easier to use than Photoshop or Gimp, making it a good choice for the amateur that has no clue what they're doing. It does require a subscription if you wish to save your edits.
As an example for purposes of demonstration, say that you're taking pictures in low light and you end up with an image that isn't blurry and has the subject in a decent pose, but it's too dark. Using the automatic exposure adjust really helps eliminate some of that gloom that can wreck pictures. The curve tool (next to clone, see later images) also changes exposure and is better than changing one element at a time. Is one part of an image too light? Use "Burn" to give a subtle darkening. Is one too dark? "Dodge" improves the balance.
My favourite feature (premium members only) is the "Clone" tool. It's really helpful for getting photobombers out of an otherwise great image.
Re-select a distance and angle frequently, or it will end up looking repetitive and odd, as shown in the light brown area.
Thanks for reading, and comment below if you have any suggestions for improvement or points of uncertainty. Remember, photography is an art, not a science, and there are more exceptions than rules. This article is intended merely as a collection of suggestions to function as a starting point.
