What are the skills to shoot the sky?

We often shoot the sky in our life, and the color change brought by the change and refraction of clouds in the sky is the best material for us to shoot. The mysterious temperament of the sky itself and the visual impact brought by the color scene make photographers like this more and want to shoot the sky more. But how can we exert the charm of the sky and attract people's attention? Learn photography from Bian Xiao.

1. Choose the expression form according to the form, which requires observation and flexible adjustment of your shooting angle.

Clouds are varied in shape. It is very important to adjust the shooting method according to the shape of the cloud.

For a large continuous cloud, you can consider shooting a big scene with a wide-angle lens to reflect its majestic momentum:

However, there will be winds. In the process of shooting, you will find that the cloud has a running direction, or a relative sense of depth. At this time, you need to adjust the relative direction yourself:

If the clouds in the sky are scattered and divided into blocks, you can use a telephoto lens to select one of them with interesting and beautiful shape as the main body and the other clouds as the foil.

It is suggested that the central composition should be adopted, and the proportion of the main picture should be appropriately increased to better express its form.

When shooting and framing, you should also pay attention to keeping the integrity of the subject "body" as much as possible, and don't let the edge of the frame cut off a part:

The most taboo of cloud photography is that there are many incomplete clouds in the picture at the same time, which makes people unable to tell which one is the main body. The picture lacks primary and secondary, and there is no focus.

As shown below, the center of the picture is empty, and there are many clouds on the edge that have been cut off by framing, so the picture lacks focus and appears chaotic:

Even if the sky is blue, it can't save this photo. Everyone should take a warning. The whole photo has no sense of completeness and layering. This is a pile of rubbish.

2. Control the exposure. Good exposure control can show different effects.

When taking pictures with clouds as the main body, the light ratio of the picture is often relatively large: there is a brightness difference between the sky and the ground, and there is also a brightness difference between the cloud itself and the sky.

As mentioned above, just shooting the sky may make the picture too empty, and it is best to include the scenery on the ground. In order to prevent the sky from being too bright, losing details or the ground from being too dark, you need to reduce the light ratio.

When using, be sure to adjust the gradient position and aim the gradient at the boundary of the dark/bright part of the picture, so that the sky can be darkened without affecting the ground scenery;

The finger in the picture above is holding a gradient gray lens, which can effectively balance the light ratio between the sky and the water surface, so that the effect will be more layered?

If you lack relevant props, you can wait until the brightness of the sky is low at dusk. Or change the composition, so that the ground scene only occupies a small part of the picture, and then silhouette. About how to shoot silhouettes, I published some articles in Bian Xiao Headline. You can learn through them.

Specifically, children's shoes that have confidence in their own technology or need to accurately control the picture effect can use the spot metering mode.

In the spot metering mode, the basic principle of selecting metering points is to aim at the "middle tone" of the picture, that is, the bright part is dark or the dark part is bright. The dark part of the cloud is a good photometric point. Look at the red dot in the middle of the cloud. This is a good focus position.

Through the live view function, you can see the picture effect under the current metering value on the LCD screen, and adjust the metering point on this basis.

After selecting the metering point, press AE-L to lock the current exposure value, and you can move the viewfinder to re-compose and shoot. If not, you can have a good look at your camera manual.

If you are not confident in the technology of selecting metering points, you can average metering and adjust exposure compensation. However, because the minimum exposure compensation unit is 1/3, the accuracy is not as good as spot metering, but it is more convenient.

When adjusting the exposure, there is another auxiliary function that needs to be used, that is, highlighting the warning. Come on, let's see how to set the highlight warning. However, this setting may be slightly different depending on the camera model.

The human eye does not have a strong ability to distinguish the "highlight-overexposure-serious overexposure" boundary, but if the highlight warning function is turned on, the overexposure part of the photo will flash, which is convenient for you to adjust the exposure accordingly.

3. For the ground scenery and composition, please pay attention when using the bisector for composition, and try not to use the bisector.

Just shooting clouds will make the picture boring, and adding some ground scenery can effectively enrich your picture.

When shooting a panoramic view of large clouds, it is advisable to add ground scenery such as mountains, seas, plains and extended roads as a foil to show the atmosphere of the picture:

When taking such photos, try to avoid putting the horizon/sea level in half of the picture. This balanced composition will make the picture look old-fashioned and quite boring.

Instead, it should be placed in the upper and lower third of the picture according to the dichotomy, and you can choose to highlight the sky clouds or the ground scenery according to the actual situation.

Of course, you don't have to stick to the "trichotomy". If the ground scenery is really boring and the clouds are beautiful, you can put it on the edge of the picture and adjust it according to your own ideas, or even don't shoot at all.

It is also a good choice to put isolated trees, houses and other scenery with size recognition significance in the front and middle scenes and use comparative composition.

Trees and houses are separated, and large clouds form a sharp contrast between less and more, small and big, and the picture is more impactful and connotative.

It is also a good choice to enlarge the foreground scene and try to take a view and compose a composition.

The branches and leaves of trees are the best framework, with naturally extending posture and rhythmic outline, and the contrast between green and blue sky and white clouds is also quite high:

Pay attention to the proportion of the frame scene in the picture.

The picture frame is too small to attract attention and can't play the role of "providing shelter" that the picture frame should have; In fact, some people complain that the frame above is not big enough, but I think it is enough. )

If the frame is too large, it will attract the attention of the audience too much, resulting in a messy picture, regardless of priority:

4. Try special skills, such as slow door, or delay taking pictures.

It is very important to take photos with clouds as the main body and capture the three-dimensional sense and texture of clouds. Besides using polarizers, we should try some special technologies, such as HDR.

Let's take a look at some sky artists taken by the slow door technique first.

HDR, a high dynamic range image, uses different exposure value to shoot the same scene, and then combines it. Specific to the subject of shooting clouds, HDR technology can greatly enhance the layering of clouds:

In fact, this "thick cloud rolling" effect is one of the iconic special effects of HDR.

It should be noted that using HDR to enhance the layering of clouds may cause the color and texture of ground scenes to become weird at the same time. It is best not to put too many ground scenes in the picture.

You can also try long exposure, fix the camera with a tripod and set a long exposure time, which can make the cloud feel flowing.

The exposure time is usually set to about 30 to 40 seconds. After all, clouds move slowly (unless it is windy), so they are usually exposed for a long time at dusk.

If you want to be exposed for a long time during the day, please wear ND glasses to prevent overexposure. The higher the value of ND mirror, the better the dimming effect. A piece of ND 1000 can expose you in broad daylight for a few minutes!

However, the longer the exposure time, the stronger the "liquidity". Try several different exposure times.

When it comes to HDR photography, some novices may not be very good at it. If necessary, the next issue of Bian Xiao will introduce the photography skills of HDR. What photography knowledge do you want to know specifically? You can also send a private message to Bian Xiao in the message or after paying attention. Bian Xiao will try his best to take the time to answer them one by one. Take a detour if you spray water.