P#12 Q7A: What Are Some Things I Can Do to Improve My Adventure and Action Photography?

Isolate and Illustrate

Charlie Borland: I think there are two approaches to photography in general, but especially with action photography. I call the approaches "isolate or illustrate." It's a visual approach about how you're going to photograph your subject.

Let's say, for example, you're photographing a woman riding a bicycle in Paris. The Eiffel Tower is in the background. You put on a wide angle lens and capture the Tower in the background.

You then have the model ride back, turn around, and come at you again. This time, however, you put on a 300mm lens. You're zooming in right full frame on her. She's riding and smiling at the camera as she's riding along but the background behind her goes completely out of focus because you're using a 300mm lens.

What you've done is you've isolated her from the scene where she was with the 300mm lens, and with the wide angle lens you could see where she was -- you could see the Eiffel Tower. This allows you to illustrate your photographs and tell a visual story.

But by putting on that telephoto lens and zooming in on the subject, the model is no longer in Paris. She's just a person riding a bike and there's an out of focus background behind her. This applies to everything you're doing, no matter where you are or what adventure you might be photographing.

If you've got a raft floating down a river and you put on a 300mm lens and you zoom in on them, there's a good chance they could be pretty much on any river that's that big. But if you put on a wide angle lens and you're in the Grand Canyon, you start showing the desert cliffs behind them and you're telling a more visual story by illustrating the picture and showing the surroundings.

Cross country skiing at Yellowstone with Old Faithful Geyser in the background is another example. Here you probably have a huge geyser with a very small person, and you are illustrating your picture. This is a very powerful statement, size relationship as well as where they are.

Now they're skiing away from the geyser - put on that long lens, zoom in on them. If you sell your photographs, you might be able to sell that picture for a magazine story on cross country skiing in Colorado because it doesn't tell where the picture was taken.

I call it isolate and illustrate. Look at every subject that you're photographing in that manner. I tell the story with the big picture, then I'm going to zoom in for the tight picture and it creates a whole different statement.

I recommend people isolate and illustrate any subject they're shooting when doing action photography.

To Sum Up

When it comes to great action photographs, there are two different approaches -- those that are isolated and those that illustrate a story. If you want to take your action photography to the next level, you'll want to master both techniques.