Making Textures the Natural Way

First Snow by Richard Lewis 2013

Textures added to a digital photograph can create surreal, impressionistic, grungy and abstract images. Usually a texture is added as a layer in a photo editing program like Photoshop. But sometimes snow and rain can naturally add beautiful textures to a photograph. These are 100% all natural, organic, textures from nature itself.

How I Did It – When using “Natural Textures” there are two things that need to be considered, the amount of texture and the quality of the texture. The amount of texture is controlled by the distance you are from your subject. The further away you are, the more texture there will be because more snow or rain is falling between you and your subject. In the photograph above the snow was falling lightly. To get the effect I wanted, I distanced myself about 300 yards from the barn and used a telephoto lens to frame the scene.

The look of the texture is controlled by the shutter speed of the camera. The shorter the shutter speed the more distinct the snow flakes or rain drops will look. The longer the shutter speed the more indistinct they will be as they are moving while the shutter is open. In the photograph above I used a shutter speed of 1/30th of a second.  The snowflakes were small and falling quickly so they look more like streaks  instead of snowflakes.

To learn how to use natural textures it is important to experiment. Try different shutter speeds and different distances and see what you like the best for the scene you are photographing.

Here is a photograph I made a few years ago. By using a fast shutter speed the snowy texture shows as more distinct flakes.

Snowscape by Richard Lewis 2010

Enjoy.

Want to be more creative with your camera? I can help so feel free to contact me. 

Like these photographs? They’re for sale as fine art prints. Please visit my photography website to see more.