How to inject a sense of scale into a photo

 

It’s a complete accident/coincidence, but there’s been a “daytime” theme to the shots I’ve shared this last few days.

Which is cool, because it demonstrates that it’s not the end of the world if you can’t shoot during the golden hours.

That said, it still helps to have something interesting about the shot.

In the case of the one I’m sharing today, it has a couple of “features”.

The first and most obvious is the silky flowing waterfall effect, courtesy of my 6-stop ND filter which enabled me to shoot a long exposure in broad daylight without overexposing the entire frame.

But secondly, if you look a little closer you’ll notice a man standing at the bottom of the waterfall.

There were a bunch of people all walking around when I took the shot and I cloned them out – but I left this one bloke in there so that the sheer size of the waterfall can be appreciated.

Sometimes it’s hard to get across to the viewer how vast a scene is, when shooting natural landscapes.

This is because there’s no frame of reference. Something that we automatically recognise the size of and can use to gauge the rest of the scene by.

Without the man in the foreground, and with the lack of other recognisable objects (like trees etc), this waterfall could be 1 metre or 100 metres tall.

So that’s my quick tip for you today. When photographing a natural scene, think about what elements you can include to express it's sense of scale.

Linking this back to one of the general composition tips I mentioned last week (or maybe the week before), which was simply put, to:

“put something in the foreground and something in the background”

if the scale-making object can double up as your foreground object then you’ll feed two birds with one scone.

(yes I did just search google for “kill two birds with one stone” alternatives! haha)

Anyway, I hope you’re still enjoying these tips and examples I’m sending and putting them to good use (or at least filing them away in your memory to recall next time you’re out with camera in hand 🙂

And in the meantime, if you’re ready to step up your Photoshop game so you can make the absolute best of the RAW files you’re coming home with, then look no further than this (click here).

Talk soon

Steve