Brown Photography
November 11th, 2009 Rob Sheppard
This is a time of year that many photographers put away their cameras. Landscapes look brown and drab nearly everywhere. There is little that is filled with color.
I can understand the disappointment in natural scenes for photography at this time of year. Yet, for some reason, I have always enjoyed photographing now. Even back when I lived in Minnesota, I loved getting out and photographing beyond the typical fall season, and before winter. Partly this is due to the seasonal conditions. I like the color temperatures and I enjoy the low light from a low sun. Plus, I often have the location to myself. Even at locations that are packed at other times of the year, I find that there is a gentle solitude that I quite like as I explore both with my eyes and my camera.
One of the biggest challenges at this time is brown. Brown can just be so very unattractive in a photograph. I think there are several things that can help you deal with brown:
- Browns look terrible when overexposed, so be careful of that.
- Light can make or break browns. Low light that skims across a brown so that its texture is revealed is a good way to work with light and browns.
- Backlight is excellent with browns and can even make them glow.
- Flat light that has no shadows or dimension is usually very difficult to work with for browns.
- Look for different browns. Red-browns look very different than tan browns and you can use color differences in browns to create very rich images. Dull gray-browns are difficult to photograph so they look good.
- Look for any contrasts. A dark tree trunk can anchor a composition, while backlit seed heads can create a glow to the image.
- With landscapes, use the blue sky as a pictorial element (not simply sky) that contrasts with the browns.
Close ups are often quite good in the fall. So many seeds look quite interesting up close, offering stunning photo opps, and there are lots of seeds in the fall.
