I've recently been lucky enough to have a lovely holiday round northern Europe and having not taken a lot of shots recently it was like a smorgasbord of inspiration. I couldn't decide what to shoot and what not to but of course as we're firmly in the digital age I didn't have to make that decision and shot everything. It's opportunities like this though where I think I learn most about this craft. Take the attached pic of Rostock's main square. I took about six variants of this one with different composition, different apertures etc. Happily the exposure was simple. Other places I bracketed exposures due to tricky lighting, messed with white balance to get beige ceilings the right colour, and generally did lots of things that in a more normal or more structured environment I either wouldn't have time to or wouldn't need to consider.
Of course I also shot raw files so if I do get that white balance decision wrong I can sort it out later. Belt and braces and all that.
The Rostock pic is also an example of the balance rules I talked about earlier. The horizon is pretty much on the upper third, the foreground is given plenty of weight of repetitive detail to balance it with the intricate details in the background, which has been maintained by using a small aperture. In the wide aperture variants too much is lost at the back. I have a load of my favourite shots from the holiday on Facebook (totally unprocessed jpegs straight from the camera) and while most are just record shots, there are a few arty ones on there I think - if you have me on your Facebook see if you can spot where I've used the rules and where I've broken them, and I'll post more soon.
Happy shooting :-)
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