Unique Shots of Common Subjects

Visting an often-photographed place? Here's how to take novel photos of it.

Dave Johnson

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Feature: Make Surprising Photos by Changing Your Perspective

Digital Focus reader Todd Fox recently entered the weekly Hot Pic contest with a picture of a mountain near his home in North Carolina. He submitted it with a question: "The Blue Ridge Mountains are some of the most-photographed sights in all of North America. How on earth can I compete with that? Is there any way to take a picture of a tourist attraction that's different from all the other pictures of the exact same scene?"

His question hit home, because I recently took my parents on a tour of Washington state's Mount Rainier, which also ranks up there on the nation's most-photographed natural wonders list. As a little test, I packed my digital camera and decided to see if I could come up with a few unique peeks at a mountain that everyone already knows pretty well.

The Classic Landscape

When you find yourself on vacation--across town or across the country--and you're standing face-to-face with a recognizable photographic icon, be sure to take at least one traditional portrait. Sure, it might be clichéd, and everyone else who has ever been there has pretty much the same shot, but it's proof that you were there. And if you do it right, it will look good.

The best time to take a picture like this is when the sun is behind you. If you're trying to shoot a westerly mountain, for instance, get it early in the day when the sun illuminates the face. If you wait till the afternoon, the sun will be overhead or behind the mountain, and the mountain will be in shadow.

Use Natural Mirrors

Another way to shoot a mountain scene is by framing it above a lake, river, or stream. The advantage is that--if you are there at the right time of day and with very little wind to disturb the water--you can capture the vista's reflection in the water. Symmetry is a powerful photographic tool.

And don't forget that there are a lot of ways to capture a reflection. You can go for nearly perfect symmetry, or you can throw the picture out of balance by taking a picture of the reflection by itself--focusing on the water and eliminating the original image and sky entirely. And since you're shooting digitally, there's nothing wrong with recomposing the picture on your PC when you get home.

If there are buildings nearby, you might even try capturing your mountain in the windows of a skyscraper.

Think About the Big--and the Little--Picture

When people see mountains, they immediately think big picture and wide angle. Most mountains are shot wide, with as much landscape included in the scene as possible. That's why you should also try the opposite and see how close you can get. I zoomed in as far as I could go just to see if Mount Rainer was any more interesting up close.

If you zoom in for a tight shot, don't forget to steady your camera against a support like a tree or set it on a tripod.

Want to take a really impressive wide-angle shot like this one? You won't get it with the lens built into your digital camera--it's simply not wide enough unless you get so far away that the mountain becomes a dot in the distance. Instead, take a series of pictures and combine them into a wide-angle shot with panorama software after you're back home. Adobe Photoshop Elements has a simple stitching tool built in. I found it for less than $100 at the PC World Product Finder. Or you can try one of the many panorama makers on the market, like Panorama Factory ($59) or Ulead Cool360($40).

In the Car Mirror

And finally, try to come up with truly original perspectives--stuff no one else has thought of. One of my favorite tricks is to catch a scene in my car's side-view mirror. It's unique, and it makes a fitting conclusion for my photo scrapbook.

Dave's Favorites: Simpler Editing With Paint Shop Pro Studio

Care to guess the most common complaint I hear about photo editing software? If you guessed that image editors aren't powerful enough, fast enough, or lack this or that essential tool, you'd be wrong. No, the most common complaint is that they're too hard to use. When you do happen to find an easy-to-use editor, it's often stripped to the bone and has an embarrassingly goofy interface.

Jasc Software is trying another approach with Paint Shop Pro Studio. A slightly watered-down version of Paint Shop Pro, it has pretty much the same interface as its more-powerful older sibling and includes most of the most useful features, but throttles back on the complexity that can overwhelm beginners.

I've been playing with Studio, and have found that it has all the basics: crop, rotate, clone brush, color correction, and automatic exposure improvements. But the program also includes most of the best stuff from Paint Shop Pro as well. There's layer support, the background eraser, and even all the selection tools that I use each week in this newsletter, like Smart Edge and Magic Wand.

So what makes Paint Shop Pro Studio unique? The program includes a great help system that lives in a pane on the side of the screen. It's easy to find instructions to "combine two photos" or "remove backlight"; and it includes numerous links to tools you need.

Don't get me wrong: Some beginners will still have trouble with Paint Shop Pro Studio, which resembles Paint Shop Pro just a little too much. It has densely packed option palettes and too many choices for folks just learning the ropes. But for anyone who doesn't want to be patronized, Studio might be a great compromise between power and simplicity. You can download a free trial copy, or buy it for $69 to $79.

Q&A: Specialty Film Scanners

Can you help me? I need to find a scanner that will accommodate narrow 110 film negatives. I am trying to compile all the pictures of my daughter for her 21st birthday, many of which are on 110 negatives.

--Barbara LaMendola, Walden, Colorado

That's a hard one, Barbara. I've shopped for scanners for a long time and I've never seen one that has an adapter designed explicitly for old 110 film. Does that mean you're out of luck? Not really--there are a couple of workarounds.

You can make your own adapter, for instance. Slide adapters for flatbed scanners are pretty simple gadgets--all they do is hold the film in place and allow backlighting to illuminate the image from behind. If you're good with your hands (or know someone that is), it's not out of the question that you could modify the negative adapter that comes with the scanner to hold 110s well enough to get the job done.

If you don't want to modify anything and don't mind throwing some money at the problem, consider buying a film scanner like the Nikon 8000ED. It is compatible with a number of accessory film holders. One of them, the FH-816, is designed to accommodate 16mm movie film, which is similar enough to 110 that I think it's quite likely that you could fit 110 film in it. The downside? The scanner costs $2500, which seems like enough money to commission someone to build you a scanner from scratch. Look around and you might find another scanner with a small-enough slide adapter to accept your 110 film negatives.

Hot Pic of the Week

Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality, and technique. Every month, the best of the weekly winners gets a prize valued at between $15 and $50.

Here's how to enter: Send us your photograph in JPEG format, at a resolution no higher than 640 by 480 pixels. Entries at higher resolutions will be immediately disqualified. If necessary, use an image editing program to reduce the file size of your image before e-mailing it to us. Include the title of your photo along with a short description and how you photographed it. Don't forget to send your name, e-mail address, and postal address. Before entering, please read the full description of the contest rules and regulations.

This Week's Hot Pic: "Frankfort Morning," by Jim Patterson, Frankfort, Michigan

Jim took this picture on a misty summer morning in Frankfort, Michigan. Jim says that the mist was just starting to lift when he captured this scene with his Kodak DX3900.