why is natural photography important? (part 1 of 2)
If I were to define Natural Photography, I suppose the simplest way to explain it is photography without any manipulation from the photographer. However, this does have to exclude post editing, as without editing, photos simply do not come to life. If you find a photographer that does not edit their photos and leaves them as “natural”, then avoid them at all costs!
There are two ways in which a photographer can shoot…RAW or JPEG. JPEG you have probably heard of. These are the image files that you will usually find on your computer and most cameras use this format. When a camera takes the photo, the file is usually auto edited by what the camera thinks the best settings are for that photo, so basically, the camera does all the work for you. Now with RAW, the image is NOT edited but the camera. It is a simply a file ready for editing, by the photographer, and then once edited it is likely saved as a JPEG file. I have gone slightly off topic here but I just wanted you to understand the difference if you did not know already and why Natural Photography still requires editing. Do a quick Google search of RAW vs. JPEG and you will find more in depth articles on this matter. I will probably write about it too in the near future.
Back to the topic in hand, Natural Photographer is important in mostly all aspects of photography. A Photograph must have a sense of realism, otherwise, to the viewer, it is just a fabricated picture with no meaning.
I see time and time again on Instagram amateur photographers overediting their photos that they just lose sense of the natural, real image, that the photo becomes unrealistic. Sunset shots are a good example. The sky will be a real weird blue, the sun will be a ridiculous orange and the green grass will be nearly yellow! I get that you want to improve your image, but when editing, you need to ask yourself “is this really how I saw it?”. Usually the answer is no.
An important aspect of Natural Photography is basically not interfere with your subject. Let’s take wedding photography for example. Now, I much prefer taking the natural shots. I prefer to be the fly on the wall and I prefer my subjects, in this case the couple, to be completely relaxed and not feel like they are modelling for me. More often than not, the couple don’t want to be told how to stand, when to kiss, where to put their hands, etc. If you were insistent on a posed shot every time, you are going to end up with a couple that had a bad experience with their photographer, and it is essential to avoid that.
What I like to do is to simply let the couple find their own way to pose their shots. If you leave them to it, you will usually find that no interference is required and you get the beautiful, natural shots you want. Having said this, it is perfectly OK, and indeed advisable, for the photographer to add something to the image if they feel it could be improved slightly. I like to call these “adjustments” rather than poses. So I might say “oh, just look back that way a sec” or “maybe take a walk along that bit there”, and not much else. I keep it nice and simple and the couple simply fill in the gaps. I would never say, “OK now kiss for me”…no, no, no! This is a totally unnatural kiss and I think it will show in the photos. Your couple will kiss when they want to!
I think this is likely to be a part one of two in regards to Natural Photography, as I need to talk more about Natural vs. Posed Photography, but for now, I will leave you with the quick summary that Natural Photography is so important as it simply presents the real image to the viewer. Simple as that really. You don’t want the viewer to feel that your image is fabricated. If it is, you want to make it clear that it is.
Thanks for reading. Look out for Part 2!
All the best
Colin