How to turn any ordinary spot into an extraordinary shot!

There are several ways to make any boring subject interesting. We often add a different spin on it or approach it from a new angle. This principle is the exact same with photography!

I will show some examples of how I was able to transform some pretty boring spots into, well, extraordinary shots. I want the main takeaway from this to be that you don’t have to find those extraordinary things in order to make a basic thing or area stand out.

First: Lighting Is Key

When it comes to photography, lighting is not only a nice thing to have but essential to have! Seriously, if you don’t use lighting to your advantage your photos will suffer. Now lets look at this photo right here.

Not bad, but talk about boring! I bet you drive by houses like this all the time and you could just take a nap right now because of how boring the photo looks now. But once we use the lighting provided by our lovely sun, and waiting for the right time of day to play with the light at our disposal, we can create a scene such as this:

It’s so beautiful I might cry! Or maybe I’ve been staring at the sun too long… Either way, looking at a subject from a different perspective is a powerful way to capture a little bit more magic than you otherwise might be able to. I waited until the evening when the sun was heading down for a snooze and BAM- the houses never looked so fancy thanks to that pre-golden hour shine.  So along with lighting photos with the sun, I had to be very aware of what the sun was doing that day before I went shooting. Understanding the suns position was key towards finding the perspective I was able to eventually find. Plus sun-flares are a nice touch.

Second: Atmosphere Keeps Your Photos Alive

If you have caught on by now, I’m showing the bad and the good versions of each step to help you transform your perspective on interesting subjects. Before diving into why atmosphere truly brings life to your photo, let me show you what photo without any atmosphere looks like:

Along with lighting you ought to use the atmosphere around you as you have it. Atmosphere creates that awesome sense of depth and matter within the air and once again, transforms run-of-the-mill photos into something spectacular:

Using the power of the sun to light my painting, I captured this moment in which a bunch of bugs were slowly flying around while still being able to grasp onto the suns heat. I couldn’t resist taking this photo as soon as I saw how cool of an image I was seeing with my eye and overall, shows that having dust, bugs, fog, or anything else can really help take your scene to the next level.

Third: Details Drive Desire

I don’t know why I said details drive desire, I just wanted to use a lot of D words. But honestly, we want detail in our subjects and that might be the easiest way to truly see the put the “extra” in front of the “ordinary” and create the “extraordinary” (I’m very proud of that bit right there). For example, look at this tree:

I’m getting sad just looking at this sad tree! But now, looking at the details I was able to use the principles I’ve been talking about this whole time and achieve amazing results:

By once again using light to enhance I then took a look at the macro details within the subject at hand and was blown away by the color and feel that these autumn leaves gave me. Inherently, the tree still looks sad and dying, but I’m sure once I show it this photo it will be at least a little less sad. Combining those fine details with new perspective just really made this a beautiful shot.