Tricks for Impressionist-like Photos

Yesterday we talked about some easy, practical tricks for photos with a watercolour or Chinese painting feel.

If you hope to do some impressionist landscape photos, here are the tricks.

The timing should be when the environmental light is like half an hour before sunset. The sky is less bright with the crimson starting to grow over everything.

It would be great if you can shoot at a place where there are lightings from buildings which would enable you to give light tracks on the final images. The best in Hong Kong is to shoot the sunset with the Victoria Harbour in the background. By the way, Hong Kong with the Victoria Harbour has been recommended by Nat Geo as one of the ten places in the world to visit in a lifetime.

Now, find the scene you think great for a landscape photo. Meter the middle tone of the brighter areas. If the sun is visible, the middle tone is right underneath the sun, which is the same for shooting a sunset scene. You should spot-meter it without including the sun by activating the spot-metering function of the camera.

Then, stop down the exposure combo if you hope for an image with a motley of richer sky colours. But the shutter should be around 1/4 or less in terms of a 24mm focal length. I assume that this wide focal length is preferred for a landscape works.

Press the shutter to shoot the photo, and briefly pan the lens horizontally. As far as I am concerned, panning vertically makes the final image less desirable.

If you bother to PP the photo, adjust the hue of it as I did to the first photo.

Voila!

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