A report in the style of atmospheric photography. How to create atmospheric portrait photographs Atmospheric photography what

We will show and tell you how, by going beyond the “limits” of the classic studio portrait, you can create “atmospheric” photographs. To capture the atmosphere - the spirit - of a place in its inextricable connection with people, the relationships between them and their daily work.

Try to create “different” ones, add freshness and innovation to them. Take a fresh look at the world by leaving the walls of your usual studio and plunging into its wide embrace. Atmospheric photography is a style of creating portraits. His idea is to show people in their familiar surroundings. Where they live, work and play.

Typically, atmospheric photography is in demand in the magazine and newspaper press. Photos that include details of someone's "habitat" can "tell" more about it than classic portraits.

Creating a photo story in the style of atmospheric photography is perfect both for fulfilling a commercial order (shooting a business process in an establishment, at an enterprise), and for creative experiments in order to “get a second wind” in shooting portraits.

A serious advantage of reporting in this style is the relaxed state of the characters. After all, they are in their everyday environment. As a result, it will be easier to capture them in natural poses. To create spectacular “atmospheric” photographs you will need your digital SLR camera, equipped with a standard lens, and a little patience. We'll show you how to use all this to shoot a report in the style of atmospheric photography.

We headed to the Society Café in Bath to photograph the staff at work. The location is ideal for training. It is constantly “boiling” with life, and the surrounding environment is attractive in detail and creates a context for the photographic story.

The secret of good atmospheric photography lies in finding the “golden mean” between the subject and his surroundings. Remember that the semantic center of your frame is the person. The environment around him hints, “revealing”, his individuality and peculiarities of life.

Check out our guide on using props and different shooting situations in which you can get great portraits. Learn how to add variety to your shots by shooting with a wide-angle lens ( approx. translator - you can find out more about the types and parameters of lenses in the second part of the series) and the effects of black and white photography. And also, what camera settings to choose to create high-quality images in each shooting situation.

Read more: "10 Common Mistakes in Portrait Photography"

Warm up by capturing some spontaneous scenes. Film what the characters do every day. For example, in the photo above, barista Ash is making coffee. Stay a little out of the way. The less you impose on your characters, the more relaxed they are. It takes a few minutes for people to lose the awkward feeling of being photographed.

Additional accessories can emphasize the individuality of the hero and “keep your hands busy”, creating conditions for more comfortable posing. An example is a photo of Katie with a cake. Props help make a photo meaningful when the background is boring. Products for sale, tools, even uniform pieces such as a chef's hat instantly spark interest in what is happening in the image, providing it with detail.

To enhance the “documentary” feel of a photograph, transform it into black and white image at the processing stage. Black and white photography always relevant. In addition, discoloration “unloads”, making it easier to perceive, a photograph replete with characters. An example is the photo above.

Read more: "10 Common Posing Mistakes"

When several spontaneous scenes are “captured” on the memory card, ask the characters to pose for you.

Place the model in the semantic center of the frame, in focus, against the background of what is happening around. Carry on a conversation with the hero while you take pictures. This will allow the person being portrayed to remain relaxed and his emotions alive. If the background is cluttered with events, reduce the aperture value, for example to 3.5, to blur the background more.

Find out more: “17 Tips for Shooting Body Models”

To look at what is happening from a “different angle”, make sure that you have a wide-angle lens in your bag with photographic equipment, for example, a Sigma 10-20 mm. Include more details of your surroundings in the frame. Shooting with a wide-angle lens is especially useful when you need to capture several people crowded next to each other in one shot.

If you're photographing indoors like we do, have your subject stand near a source of natural light. We asked barista Alistair to stand next to the window to make the final image brighter. At low light levels, a reflector, such as a “gold” one, can help. Ask a friend to hold the reflector to direct more light onto the subject's face.

Camera settings

Switch to aperture priority shooting mode ("A")

You'll be photographing handheld in fast-paced environments, so shooting in manual mode ("M") may not work. best choice to create high-quality photographs. By switching to aperture priority shooting mode ("A"), you control the aperture value. The rest of the settings will be taken over by the camera.

Increase your sensitivity

If you are shooting indoors, you will have to increase the sensitivity to, for example, ISO 1600 to compensate for the lack of light intensity. The final images will show some grain. But the “fee” is justified by the freedom of movement and the ability to get sharp pictures in any shooting situation.

Try to take photographs with a large aperture value

It is quite natural in portrait photography if you strive for a shallow depth of field ( approx. translator - you can find out more about the depth of sharply depicted space in the third part of the series). However, when you take atmospheric photos, try to avoid too much background blur. If you're shooting with the lens that comes with your camera, set the aperture to a fairly large aperture value, such as 8. This will keep most of your surroundings in "clarity" and add detail to your photo story.

First, let's understand what atmospheric photography is. Atmospheric photography allows you to convey the characteristics of a place in its inextricable connection with people, the relationships between them and their daily activities. Because atmospheric photographs include details of someone's environment, they can tell more about a person than classic portraits. Show in the photo how people work and learn from their usual environment. Atmospheric photography is used in the magazine press. Creating a report in the style of atmospheric photography is perfect for fulfilling a commercial order (shooting a business process at an event).

The main thing in atmospheric photography is the relaxed state of the characters. After all, they are in their everyday environment. As a result, it will be easier to capture them in natural poses. The semantic center of your frame is the person. The environment around him complements his personality and characteristics of life.
The secret to good atmospheric photography is capturing the moments. The less production, the better. It usually takes a few minutes for people to lose the feeling of awkwardness in front of the camera that comes with realizing they are being photographed. In order for the subject of the shooting to behave at ease, he must be relaxed. So stay away. Shoot with a 100mm lens.
Desk accessories will allow you to occupy the hero’s hands and emphasize his individuality.
Products for sale, tools, even uniform pieces such as a chef's hat instantly spark interest in what is happening in the image, providing it with detail.

In order to unload and make photos easier to perceive, convert them to black and white images during processing. Black and white photography always looks stylish.
After catching a few good moments, ask the heroes to pose for you. Carry on a conversation with the hero while you take pictures. Place the model in the semantic center of the frame.
If the background is cluttered with unnecessary details, reduce the aperture value, for example to f4, to blur the background more. To do this, switch to aperture priority (“A”) shooting mode. Increase sensitivity to ISO 1600.
When you take atmospheric photos, try to avoid too much blur in the background. Then the surrounding environment will be captured in the photo.

Every photograph has an important idea. The atmosphere of the photo is primarily the emotions of the model, but the surrounding environment is also important. It is she who fills the picture with meaning.

If you don't prepare for the shoot and think through all the details, then the photo shoot can be terrible, since it is very difficult to improvise without the ability to change anything. You always need to think through a shooting plan in advance, describe everything point by point and draw light and frame diagrams on paper.

It is equally important to find mutual language with the model. Each person has his own vision of the picture and it does not always coincide with yours. You need to learn how to adjust models to your principles and pace of work, but you yourself need to be flexible and adapt to the models. Try to work only with those models that interest you. If a person has pleasant facial expressions, an interesting type, style of clothing and behavior, then this can be used in your creative projects.

If it comes to commercial photography, then you will have to look for the best and most interesting features of their appearance, plastic movements, and figures in your models. Most portraits are taken at sunset or dawn. This time is called the golden hour. The shadows are soft and pleasant. The dynamic range of images is as wide as possible. The colors are nice and warm.

Often photographers tell models what pose to take. You have to work with beginners, but if the model is experienced, then she needs to set the mood and direction of her movements. Then all that remains is to seize the moments. You can simply chat and take pictures at certain moments. They can turn out very lively and bright.

Post-processing of photographs is also important. When processing images, you need to carefully consider color and lighting. Everything should fit harmoniously. All colors of the photo must be combined. Even if a detail creeps in that stands out from the overall picture, you will have to remove it or repaint it.

There are many sites and articles on the Internet that will provide you with comprehensive information about color selection. One of best services for color selection - this is colorscheme.ru. Frame construction plays no less important role than the idea, processing and preparation. Using natural or architectural lines you can achieve depth and force the viewer to follow the gaze from one object to another.

There are several primary colors that can be identified in the photograph. They are the ones who will decide the overall range of the photograph. You can find a number of complementary colors and decorate everything in these tones.

In order to understand how to use certain principles of creating photographs, working with perspective and color, you need to analyze the works professional photographers and try to imitate them or simply use the rules in your work and, of course, be attentive to details.

Typically, atmospheric photography is in demand in the magazine and newspaper press. Photos that include details of someone's "environment" can tell more about them than traditional portraits.

A serious advantage of reporting in this style is the relaxed state of the characters. After all, they are in their everyday environment. As a result, it will be easier to capture them in natural poses. To create spectacular atmospheric photos you will need your DSLR camera equipped with a standard lens and a little patience. We'll show you how to use all this to shoot a report in the style of atmospheric photography.

Read more: "10 Common Mistakes in Portrait Photography"

To enhance the “documentary” feel of a photograph, transform it into black and white during post-production. Black and white photography is always relevant. In addition, discoloration “unloads”, making it easier to perceive, a photograph replete with characters. An example is the photo above.

Read more: "10 Common Posing Mistakes"

When several spontaneous scenes are “captured” on the memory card, ask the characters to pose for you.

Find out more: “17 Tips for Shooting Body Models”

Camera settings

Switch to aperture priority shooting mode ("A")

You'll be photographing handheld in fast-paced environments, so shooting in manual mode (M) may not be the best choice for capturing quality photos. By switching to aperture priority shooting mode ("A"), you control the aperture value. The rest of the settings will be taken over by the camera.

Increase your sensitivity

Try to take photographs with a large aperture value

Artem Kashkanov, 2012

Probably not everyone knows what “atmospheric photography” is. In general, it is difficult to give a clear definition of the concept of “atmospheric”. In general, this is a set of visual means that immerse the viewer in the atmosphere of a painting, photograph, film, computer game. Sometimes images and photographs made in a similar style have very little in common with reality, but at the same time they do not lose their exceptional emotionality and attractiveness.

The first thing that comes to mind when looking at these photos is “wow!!!”, or “well, photoshop was clearly involved here!” As for the second statement, I’m willing to bet anything, but Photoshop is not needed to get most of these images. The maximum that is required from software is a RAW converter that has a basic set of tools for image correction - adjusting white balance, levels, saturation and other basic settings.

There are two main approaches to obtaining “surreal” photographs:

1. Take a photograph of an ordinary landscape in Photoshop (or another similar editor) add surrealism to the picture using computer processing. It falls under the same category.

2. Force the camera see the picture the way we want to get it thanks to the use of some auxiliary devices.

Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. The biggest disadvantage in the first approach is that you must be a master of Photoshop, be able to notice flaws that appear during processing and correctly correct them. The matter is complicated by the fact that you have to be content with the characteristics of the camera - photo latitude (dynamic range), a set of sensitivity settings, shutter speeds, apertures. No matter how advanced the technology is, there are still regularly frames that cannot be captured in one shutter release - you have to turn on bracketing, and then combine the resulting images into one, using special and not always free software. Often this is a long process and not always creative work. As for the level of Photoshop proficiency, it must be exceptional. Unfortunately, most amateur photographers do not have such a wealth of knowledge (I am no exception!) that would allow them to turn regular photos into masterpieces of surrealism, while maintaining impeccable image quality.

The second method is convenient in that you yourself, using depth of field control, light filters, reflectors and other “gadgets”, already at the entrance to the lens, form an image that will not require further processing (or, it will be enough to limit yourself to basic operations - brightness, contrast , BB). The disadvantage is that you need to have in your arsenal a whole set of additional accessories, sometimes expensive ones - firstly, and secondly - to be able to use them. This article will discuss exactly this approach as applied to landscape photography. The visual material will be taken from photographs taken by me during a recent morning “expedition” with a camera into the floodplain of the Oka River (near the city of Pavlovo, Nizhny Novgorod region).

What equipment did I take with me to the shoot?

Camera Canon EOS 5D. Don’t let beginners be confused by the class of the technology; amateur DSLRs are also quite capable of such things.
Lens Canon EF 24-105mm 1:4L IS USM. For cropped cameras, I recommend an equivalent wide-angle lens, for example Canon EFS 15-85mm.
Polarizing filter HOYA HD CIR-PL (77 mm)- I recently bought it in the Softmarket online store for 3,790 rubles, now it has become more expensive there, but it is still much cheaper than in stores.
Gradient filter - sometimes it helps a lot, sometimes it ruins it - I haven't tried it yet :)
Tripod- was of no use and ended up in the trunk.

Before you go to the shoot...

You need to do two things - decide on the time of the photo shoot and its location. The most valuable time is from the moment the sun rises until it rises high. Typically this is about two hours. You can look up the sunrise time in your region on the Internet - many sites contain such information, for example this one - travel.org.ua/sunrise. There are similar programs for mobile phones and tablets, very convenient!

The best weather for filming is in the morning in clear, windless weather. You can predict the morning weather using a number of simple signs - abundant dew on the grass in the evening, a clear horizon at sunset. If the wind rises at sunset, it is bad sign, even if it doesn’t blow up the clouds, it will disperse the fog - this can greatly spoil the results of a photo expedition. Weather check - an hour before dawn. If the sky is clear, with light cirrus clouds, and there is no wind, then you can safely go. If the sky is covered with a veil of clouds or the wind has risen, you can safely continue to sleep.

When choosing a shooting location, it is better to give preference to those places where there is thick fog in the morning. Basically, these are flooded meadows with small lakes and sparsely growing trees. Such a landscape is often found in floodplains. There is nothing to do in the forest (as well as on forest lakes) - all the delights of morning nature - fog, huge drops of dew on the grass in the forest are difficult to find. The most you can see is a light fog spreading from the shores of forest lakes.

Beautiful, of course, but clear summer morning you can find more interesting landscapes!

Oddly enough, at dawn, beautiful landscapes can be found where during the day we are used to seeing a very dull landscape. As I already said, we are going to the water meadows. Naturally, there is no water on them anymore - since the end of spring, tall grass has grown on them. So, let’s look at typical scenes from the “sunrise over a meadow” category and see how best to photograph them.

The sun in the frame

How does it usually happen? Here is a typical example from Yandex photos - though it’s not a dawn, but a sunset. I was looking for sunrises - a complete “triumph of Photoshop”, but I was interested in “raw footage”.

" " on Yandex.Photos

This is a familiar situation, isn't it? The sky is whitened, the sun has smeared into a huge pancake, the earth is almost black. The dynamic range is sorely lacking. There are two ways to get around this problem:

1. Tripod, bracketing, HDR- long, tedious and good result not guaranteed. Here is a good example, but nevertheless the picture looks a little artificial. However, in my opinion, a lot of time was spent on processing.

Sergey Stepanenko “Field lamps”

2. Gradient filter. An example of use is below...

Almost the same thing, but without any dancing with a tambourine. EXIF data: shutter speed 1/80 sec, aperture 8, focal length 28mm, ISO100 - as you can see, nothing special, such parameters can be set on any device, even a point-and-shoot camera! Naturally, you can continue to process the image in Photoshop, but I decided that it was quite possible to stop at what had been achieved during shooting.

morning sky

Early in the morning on a sunny day there are often very light cirrus clouds in the sky, forming interesting swirls. Unfortunately, they are very faintly visible to the naked eye, since the fog surrounds us and practically hides the sky. To see him will help us polarizing filter. Let me remind you that the main property of a polarizer is to “dampen” the reflected light. The polarizer makes the fog transparent, but it does it in a very interesting way - the fog lying above the ground remains dense, but a “window” appears above us, through which cirrus clouds are visible.

I think this example is enough to understand how to use a polarizer when shooting in the morning in the fog. A polarizer works best when the sun is to one side of us.

"Other planet"

The photographs below are the result of an experiment - the combined use of a polarizing and gradient filter.

The results of the filters overlapped each other - the polarizer “pierced” the layer of fog and allowed us to see the blue sky (although there were no clouds), the gradient filter made the sky darker and helped lighten the ground a little. The photograph created a mystical and, I would even say, unearthly atmosphere - a different sky, different grass, different air!

As mentioned earlier, the circular gradient filter is a thing that can either help or hurt. Here is an example when the gradient filter works “on the verge of a foul” - the top of the tree also “came under attack” and turned out to be darkened.

There are two more features of using two filters together. Firstly - vignetting. At a focal length of 24mm, black corners are visible at the edges of the frame. To get rid of them, you need to extend the zoom to at least 35 mm.

The second feature - do not screw the filters tightly to each other! Separating them later will be more difficult than connecting them :)

"Hedgehog in the Fog"

This famous cartoon received several “Best Animated Film” awards, including foreign ones. And it's not just like that...

On morning shoots you find yourself in approximately the same atmosphere! For example, when I was climbing along the shore of a lake, I slipped and almost fell into the water along with my camera :) It’s funny, but there is some truth in every joke.

Being in dense fog, the photographer has a wonderful opportunity to build very harmonious and balanced compositions literally “out of the blue.” The fog hides all photo debris, making it possible to concentrate the viewer's attention on the desired object or combination of objects.

In the fog, many principles of classical photographic composition break down and completely different principles come into force - those by which compositions in the style of minimalism. The main object does not have to be 100% visible. If there is an understatement left in the photograph, it can be compensated for by the wealth of associations that the photographic work can evoke in the viewer.

Misty Rainbow

This time I observed this interesting phenomenon for the first time in my life. It appeared 1.5 hours after sunrise, when I was already driving home. Unfortunately, the road ran through an open field, so it was not possible to build some more or less complete composition, nevertheless, I am attaching a photo.

On this optimistic note, I believe that theory can be completed and practice can begin. I wish everyone successful experiments!