Go for Bold Colour!

One thing that you should look out for while you're out shooting is bold colour. Very often we shoot with a wide-angle lens setting in order to capture an entire scene. This can often be a mistake because, when you do this, you essentially watered-down the visual impact of the scene. In fact by adding more visual content to the scene you delete your original intentions which more than likely would have been to impress the audience. The solution to this is fairly simple. Zoom in, fill the frame, keep it simple, Go for bold colour.

This was my favourite shot from a shoot late Thursday evening at the Al Qasr in Dubai. This is a ritzy, expensive fantasy land of accommodation catering for anyone prepared to pay $4,000+ four nights bed and breakfast. Okay, the grounds are amazing, the architecture is stunning and, no doubt the food is fantastic but it's the price of a second-hand car - not to mention a couple of very good new lenses!

Despite the price of the night's accommodation we got in for free and were allowed to roam around the beach area shooting pictures running up to sunset. This snap was taken 20 minutes before the sun went below the horizon so I got a wonderful warm light falling on the lifeguard who was sitting somewhat elevated in a chair above the beach. Squat down and shoot upwards and you lose the confusing mess at the back of the beach and are left with just the subject matter: the lifeguard. I shot this with an EF 70-200mm f2.8 lens at an aperture of f2.8 to further isolate the subject from any background remaining.