The Season is Changing from Summer to Winter.

The season is changing from summer to winter here in the Sinai, that means that right now we have more cloud formations than we usually have during the year.

I have taken advantage of this opportunity to photograph the sky, with the different formation the clouds are taking, cumulous, cirrus clouds etc.

I will now file these sky photographs that I have taken under Sky_clouds. So that I can use them later on when I have a photograph with a boring looking sky where a sky with clouds would take the photograph to a different level of just being an ok picture to become a great one.

Remember when you are adding a sky you need to make sure that the light conditions and its direction fits in with your picture otherwise it will look fake and that is not the look we are after.

You can apply this idea to different elements of your pictures some pictures look better if you for instance add a moon, it could be full moon or a crescent etc. So you can also go and build a library with different moon shapes. If you choose a crescent remember to apply the moon the right way up depending on where the photograph is taken. Since the moon crescent looks different if you are here in Egypt compared to England etc. Since I grew up in Sweden to me the crescent moon here in Egypt looks like it is upside down.

They key with adding elements to your photographs is that they always need to look natural/real and seamless.

When making your own library of photographs that you need to use later you need to have a fool proof filing system. Something that works for you and is simple. Don’t try to make things more complicated than they have to be is something I always try to live by. Since these are photographs that I will be using over and over again I will save them as a TIFF file instead of a JPG file, to make sure that over time the photographs still have all their pixels intact. Every time you open a JPG file it looses quality.

This morning I played a bit with motion blur. You can be quite creative with it. The problem I have with this picture of the car is that it does not have a driver so either it is a very futuristic BMW that can drive itself or its just a picture that is unrealistic, I would have to opt for the second choice unfortunately but it proves my point above that when you are changing a photograph make sure you think of all the elements, you want the finished photograph to look realistic otherwise you will only annoy the viewer.

If you need help with your Photoshop skills I can recommend a magazine that comes out every month in the UK called Digital Photo. Every issue also comes with a CD with video lessons of how to use different Photoshop skills and other photo tricks. It is very useful they also always have a gear tests that can make interesting reading, if you are looking for something new to add to your photo arsenal.