After watching all the images in the latest Winter wonderland photo contest, I saw some really nice pictures with some typical “beginners flaws”. So, I thought, I should write down few easy steps to greatly improve drone images.
First step: Golden ratio and rule of thirds
Images where the main subject is in the center are boring. Simple as that. Many drone pilots shoot images where they center the subject because it’s natural for us. If we want to go somewhere, we look directly at it. If we want to show something, we focus on it. But how to do it better?
Imagine the whole image divided by two horizontal and two vertical lines into nine parts – a simple grid. In the DJI App you can even activate this grid. In my opinion it is very helpful to compose an image. Now place your subject on one of the four intersection points and you follow the golden ratio. Of course, you don’t need to place the subject exact on the intersection. Let’s take a look at my contest picture:
I’d say it’s spot on the intersection.
If your subject has a clear front-side on the image (like the face of a person/animal or the front of a car), the front side should not face to the nearer border. It should always face into the picture. Even if the subject is looking in the same direction as the picture is taken, the subject should look a little bit to the center.
Of course, you should mind the golden ratio while composing the image but you can always crop the image later. Mostly I do a bit of both. I place the subject not in the center but I do the final composition in the editing. I try a bit till I find (for me) the most appealing composition. If the subject is a bit off the intersections I don’t mind. I don’t even use the grid lines in this process.
The second part is the rule of thirds. If your image is somehow divided (Horizon, water/land, roads, etc.) don’t place the dividing line into the center. Place it near one of your two grid lines. If you want to show the clouds in the sky, place the horizon on the bottom grid line. If you want to show the ground, place it on the upper grid line. If you have a beach on the left and the water on the right, place the crossing between land and water on the left or right grid line.
Second step: Guides to your subject
Very often you find “guiding lines” in images. Especially in landscape images. You can use lines to attract the viewers focus to your subject. Let’s see how the guiding lines are in my contest image:
You can see, everything in the picture is pointing somewhere to the bottom right, where my subject is. Again, it is not necessary to have the lines pointing exact to your subject, but the general direction should be to the part of the image where your subject lays.
Getting an eye for this is much harder then the golden ratio. And without heavy editing you can’t change it afterwards. To getting used to guiding lines remember what can cause them. For typical drone images this are: roads, power lines, buildings, fences, rivers or water in general, different colored fields, tracks, tree lines, the horizon, clouds. Try to really see these things and their direction while composing. Also take a look at your older images and find the guiding lines there.
Third step: Isolate you subject
In photography you mostly want to make your subject stand clear of the background. It should actually pop out of your image. As a drone pilot the most common tool isn’t really available: the aperture. You all know the images, where the background is blurred out while the subject is crisp:
Your focus is instantly on the subject and only after a few moments you recognize the background. Sometimes, if you don’t take the time, you never really see the background. Simplified, the blurred background emerges from a handful characteristics: the aperture (the wider (lower number) the blurrier the background), the focal length (the longer, the blurrier), the distance between foreground and background (the greater, the blurrier) and the sensor size (the larger, the blurrier). Drones have: a rather short focal length, a rather small sensor, an open but not wide-open aperture and if you shoot from above, the background is right behind (under) your subject. Not the best conditions.
But the blurred background is only the most common option to pop out your subject. Others are a high contrast between subject and background (bright subject, dark background or vice versa). Just take a brief look at the contest image again:
You see it?
You can also use color contrast. Opposing colors in the color wheel give great color contrast:
Source: Color wheel - Wikipedia
Or you can use a pattern contrast. A very silent, even background and a wild, sharp or crazy subject will stand out.
Of course, you can even combine those techniques.
Fourth step: Correct exposure
It’s important to get the exposure right. Modern cameras like our beloved drone has, are pretty good with auto-exposure. But sometime they can’t do it perfect. If your picture is full of snow on a bright day, there’s a good chance that auto exposure will make you snow looking grey and not white, because the auto exposure tries to get an average exposure for the whole image. So as soon as your image contains large parts of very bright or very dark areas you should not solely rely on auto exposure.
It is also very hard for your camera to exposure pictures with very bright and very dark areas. Like direct sunlight and something in the shadow. You have to decide if you go for the shadows and have white areas where your lights are or you go for the lights and have very dark to black shadows. As a rule of thumb, you should always exposure your light correctly. Lights attract the viewers focus and white areas are not pretty. Also, it’s a lot easier to repair under exposed parts than over exposed parts.
On my contest image I had to deal with very bright (snow) and moderate dark areas (cabin, trees).
The snow on the roof of the cabin is overexposed. You see absolutely no structure in the snow itself only the darker lines from the roof. For such a small part of the image, it’s okay. But imagine the whole snow-area would be a solely white area: not pretty.
The cabin itself is bright enough to see the structure, so the shadows are fine.
What can you do, to avoid problems: direct sunlight is always a hard condition, because it’s bright (I see, you get it) and the shadows are dark. A bit haze or some clouds can help you. You can brighten the shadows in the editing. The RAW file (DNG File) has more reserves for this.
You should activate the histogram in your DJI App to get the right exposure. The histogram consists of lines which represent the amount of dark (left), middle-bright (middle) and bright (right) pixels of your image. The higher the right side of your histogram, the brighter is your image. If there are no lines in left and everything is in the right, it’s a sign of overexposure. If everything is in the left, it’s a sign of underexposure. If there are long lines in the outside left and outside right you have very high contrast on your image (e.g. sunny day). If the greatest amount is in the middle, you have lower contrast (e.g. cloudy day or fog). I’m not going anymore into detail, there are many good articles about the histogram in the web. Go and read them. Learn how a histogram works and use it. It’s your best tool to check the exposure because you cannot always rely on your display especially on a bright day outside. You know, sometimes it’s even hard to solely see what’s on the display. Use the histogram!
This is the histogram of my contest picture. To keep the structures in the snow it’s little bit underexposed.
Fifth step: The perspective
Interesting pictures have interesting perspectives. The camera is near the ground or looks through a whole. You have a top down picture or whatever. As drone pilots this is a little bit easier because the drones enable us to take pictures from unusual perspectives. But keep in mind that just flying high isn’t it. Think a little bit about what you want to show. Emphasize this with your perspective. Do you want to show open fields: flying higher, showing the wide fields as you point the camera to the horizon is better than take a top-down shot. If you want to show that something is big (like a mountain), try a perspective where you look up to your subject. For some subjects it’s nice to be on the same height as the subject (e.g. a bridge over a canyon or flying birds). If you are not sure, just take pictures of different perspectives. Just experiment!
Sixth step: Analyze images you like
Is there’s an image that just blows you away, analyze it, why it does so. Is it the subject? Probably. But it’s never ever the subject alone. Take a look at the colors, the composition, the perspective, everything I address in this guide. And as you realize why an image is a good image, learn from it, adapt. Maybe you should also try to redo images you like and then compare your image with the original and again, analyze which is better and why it’s better. Start with the pictures of the winter wonderland contest, there are also some really amazing shots!
Seventh step: Break the rules
Now you learned some basic photography rules. But if always everybody follows the rules, it would be boring again. So, break the rules! Do something uncommon, place your subject in the center. Overexposure your picture. But whatever you do, do it on purpose. If you want to break the rules you have to know the rules. Photography is creativity! And if you do it right, you’ll surprise your viewers.
I hope you could learn something from this. If you have any questions, additions or anything else, just write it here or send me a message. I’m not a native English speaker, so if there are mistakes in the text, I’ll be happy if you tell me so I can correct them.
Greetings
Jürgen
First step: Golden ratio and rule of thirds
Images where the main subject is in the center are boring. Simple as that. Many drone pilots shoot images where they center the subject because it’s natural for us. If we want to go somewhere, we look directly at it. If we want to show something, we focus on it. But how to do it better?
Imagine the whole image divided by two horizontal and two vertical lines into nine parts – a simple grid. In the DJI App you can even activate this grid. In my opinion it is very helpful to compose an image. Now place your subject on one of the four intersection points and you follow the golden ratio. Of course, you don’t need to place the subject exact on the intersection. Let’s take a look at my contest picture:
I’d say it’s spot on the intersection.
If your subject has a clear front-side on the image (like the face of a person/animal or the front of a car), the front side should not face to the nearer border. It should always face into the picture. Even if the subject is looking in the same direction as the picture is taken, the subject should look a little bit to the center.
Of course, you should mind the golden ratio while composing the image but you can always crop the image later. Mostly I do a bit of both. I place the subject not in the center but I do the final composition in the editing. I try a bit till I find (for me) the most appealing composition. If the subject is a bit off the intersections I don’t mind. I don’t even use the grid lines in this process.
The second part is the rule of thirds. If your image is somehow divided (Horizon, water/land, roads, etc.) don’t place the dividing line into the center. Place it near one of your two grid lines. If you want to show the clouds in the sky, place the horizon on the bottom grid line. If you want to show the ground, place it on the upper grid line. If you have a beach on the left and the water on the right, place the crossing between land and water on the left or right grid line.
Second step: Guides to your subject
Very often you find “guiding lines” in images. Especially in landscape images. You can use lines to attract the viewers focus to your subject. Let’s see how the guiding lines are in my contest image:
You can see, everything in the picture is pointing somewhere to the bottom right, where my subject is. Again, it is not necessary to have the lines pointing exact to your subject, but the general direction should be to the part of the image where your subject lays.
Getting an eye for this is much harder then the golden ratio. And without heavy editing you can’t change it afterwards. To getting used to guiding lines remember what can cause them. For typical drone images this are: roads, power lines, buildings, fences, rivers or water in general, different colored fields, tracks, tree lines, the horizon, clouds. Try to really see these things and their direction while composing. Also take a look at your older images and find the guiding lines there.
Third step: Isolate you subject
In photography you mostly want to make your subject stand clear of the background. It should actually pop out of your image. As a drone pilot the most common tool isn’t really available: the aperture. You all know the images, where the background is blurred out while the subject is crisp:
Your focus is instantly on the subject and only after a few moments you recognize the background. Sometimes, if you don’t take the time, you never really see the background. Simplified, the blurred background emerges from a handful characteristics: the aperture (the wider (lower number) the blurrier the background), the focal length (the longer, the blurrier), the distance between foreground and background (the greater, the blurrier) and the sensor size (the larger, the blurrier). Drones have: a rather short focal length, a rather small sensor, an open but not wide-open aperture and if you shoot from above, the background is right behind (under) your subject. Not the best conditions.
But the blurred background is only the most common option to pop out your subject. Others are a high contrast between subject and background (bright subject, dark background or vice versa). Just take a brief look at the contest image again:
You see it?
You can also use color contrast. Opposing colors in the color wheel give great color contrast:
Source: Color wheel - Wikipedia
Or you can use a pattern contrast. A very silent, even background and a wild, sharp or crazy subject will stand out.
Of course, you can even combine those techniques.
Fourth step: Correct exposure
It’s important to get the exposure right. Modern cameras like our beloved drone has, are pretty good with auto-exposure. But sometime they can’t do it perfect. If your picture is full of snow on a bright day, there’s a good chance that auto exposure will make you snow looking grey and not white, because the auto exposure tries to get an average exposure for the whole image. So as soon as your image contains large parts of very bright or very dark areas you should not solely rely on auto exposure.
It is also very hard for your camera to exposure pictures with very bright and very dark areas. Like direct sunlight and something in the shadow. You have to decide if you go for the shadows and have white areas where your lights are or you go for the lights and have very dark to black shadows. As a rule of thumb, you should always exposure your light correctly. Lights attract the viewers focus and white areas are not pretty. Also, it’s a lot easier to repair under exposed parts than over exposed parts.
On my contest image I had to deal with very bright (snow) and moderate dark areas (cabin, trees).
The snow on the roof of the cabin is overexposed. You see absolutely no structure in the snow itself only the darker lines from the roof. For such a small part of the image, it’s okay. But imagine the whole snow-area would be a solely white area: not pretty.
The cabin itself is bright enough to see the structure, so the shadows are fine.
What can you do, to avoid problems: direct sunlight is always a hard condition, because it’s bright (I see, you get it) and the shadows are dark. A bit haze or some clouds can help you. You can brighten the shadows in the editing. The RAW file (DNG File) has more reserves for this.
You should activate the histogram in your DJI App to get the right exposure. The histogram consists of lines which represent the amount of dark (left), middle-bright (middle) and bright (right) pixels of your image. The higher the right side of your histogram, the brighter is your image. If there are no lines in left and everything is in the right, it’s a sign of overexposure. If everything is in the left, it’s a sign of underexposure. If there are long lines in the outside left and outside right you have very high contrast on your image (e.g. sunny day). If the greatest amount is in the middle, you have lower contrast (e.g. cloudy day or fog). I’m not going anymore into detail, there are many good articles about the histogram in the web. Go and read them. Learn how a histogram works and use it. It’s your best tool to check the exposure because you cannot always rely on your display especially on a bright day outside. You know, sometimes it’s even hard to solely see what’s on the display. Use the histogram!
This is the histogram of my contest picture. To keep the structures in the snow it’s little bit underexposed.
Fifth step: The perspective
Interesting pictures have interesting perspectives. The camera is near the ground or looks through a whole. You have a top down picture or whatever. As drone pilots this is a little bit easier because the drones enable us to take pictures from unusual perspectives. But keep in mind that just flying high isn’t it. Think a little bit about what you want to show. Emphasize this with your perspective. Do you want to show open fields: flying higher, showing the wide fields as you point the camera to the horizon is better than take a top-down shot. If you want to show that something is big (like a mountain), try a perspective where you look up to your subject. For some subjects it’s nice to be on the same height as the subject (e.g. a bridge over a canyon or flying birds). If you are not sure, just take pictures of different perspectives. Just experiment!
Sixth step: Analyze images you like
Is there’s an image that just blows you away, analyze it, why it does so. Is it the subject? Probably. But it’s never ever the subject alone. Take a look at the colors, the composition, the perspective, everything I address in this guide. And as you realize why an image is a good image, learn from it, adapt. Maybe you should also try to redo images you like and then compare your image with the original and again, analyze which is better and why it’s better. Start with the pictures of the winter wonderland contest, there are also some really amazing shots!
Seventh step: Break the rules
Now you learned some basic photography rules. But if always everybody follows the rules, it would be boring again. So, break the rules! Do something uncommon, place your subject in the center. Overexposure your picture. But whatever you do, do it on purpose. If you want to break the rules you have to know the rules. Photography is creativity! And if you do it right, you’ll surprise your viewers.
I hope you could learn something from this. If you have any questions, additions or anything else, just write it here or send me a message. I’m not a native English speaker, so if there are mistakes in the text, I’ll be happy if you tell me so I can correct them.
Greetings
Jürgen
