Photo Recipe GREEN

Technology changes with time, but the fundamentals and recipes in photography remains. This article was first published in 2011, revised in 2018

Green is one of the additive primary colours created from a mixture of yellow and blue. In Old English term, green is closely related to the verb “Growen” meaning “to grow”. Green is also associated with nature, love and lust, death, decay, evil, prosperity etc. Everywhere on earth, we can see green, including the ocean water which appears greenish.

This time round, we shall talk about subjects that are green. This may sound easy, but a walk along the streets of Chinatown searching for subjects that are green somewhat appears to be a daunting task. Let’s make this a photography project in which you shall explore your favourite places, your neighbourhood, and search for subjects that are green. It could be a signboard, a plant, a souvenir….but let’s move away from macro close-ups for once. Look for things that are green in colour.

Below are some tips which you may find useful. Let’s get started, take out your DSLR/Mirrorless camera or handphone camera, look around you in your neighbourhood or favourite places or during your family outings in the weekend, and enjoy a world of “green” photography. Probably while waiting for the dishes to be served in your family outing, you can catch a few shots on your dining table.

I decided to make my day photographing at Chinatown a challenging one by setting a theme for the day: “Green”. I started off buying a souvenir from the shops in Chinatown. This is a beautiful handicraft which I can use with various background settings, and I eventually chose the green shirt of my friend as the background as I wanted to make the handicraft stand out in the photograph as the main subject. I go for the sunlit area, so that there will be shadow and highlight on the green shirt to make the picture “less flat”.

Some of the souvenir shops there sell nice scarves and in this case, we can appreciate the use of patterns. Try to exclude the background mess and zoom in on the green scarf and the other coloured scarf. No harm using some photo enhancing touch-up in the computer to desaturate the other colours to make them black and white, in a bid to make the green scarf stands out from the others even better.

These cute turtle magnets caught my attention, set against a black background. However, the souvenir shop staff was not on a friendly mode and I had to quickly catch a few shots before being shooed away. I did some cropping to remove other souvenirs. If I had my way, I would arrange all the turtle magnets and play with the various angles as well as experimenting with the different depth of field.

On a colour wheel based on the traditional colour theory, the complementary colour for green is red. I bought a few souvenir from this shop and I finally had my way. The boss allowed me to rearrange some of the souvenirs and I shot happily. He even helped me with the arrangement, helping me to select the green and the red souvenirs!

One of the many banners on the roof. The wavy pattern caught my attention and I decided to use it to my advantage. I isolated the angle just to solely include the word, the wavy pattern and the black background. The banner actually read “Singapore Coin Museum”, hence I can have 3 pictures out of this banner, each picture with a different word.

The old green tiles on the roof made an interesting pattern, and to “break” the pattern, I isolated a few tiles which are broken and included them in the picture.

It was a very hot and sunny day when I was photographing. There were puddles of water on the road. On a sunny day, with water on the road, I shall explore reflections! There are a few green signages, green coloured buildings and a few other subjects. The boundary of the water puddle shall form a framing effect for the picture, while I try to squeeze the green building into the water reflection.

Take Note

Learn to isolate subjects from the surrounding, and decide which angle to approach to make the subject stands out. For the above, I walked past a jewellery shop where many chains of interesting crystals of all colours were left suspended. I am very sure there are green crystals. I explored the many chains of crystals and chose a few chains with huge green crystal beads. Perhaps a contrast in the colours will make the green crystal beads stand out better. I rearranged the beads and here we go, a close-up shot of the green crystal beads.


Leaves back lit by the sunlight often results in a nice green glow on the leaf surface. However, try to choose a clean and uniform background which is not so distracting. The green background complements better with the glowing leaf (right) as compared with the sky as the background (left).

The taxi signage is an interesting subject and I asked my friend to use their fingers to create a framing effect. I play with the depth of field for both pictures, using big and small aperture, to create different visual effect.
You can experiment with different design elements such as framing, reflection, patterns, perspective etc to help you get more ideas on how to photograph the image. Enjoy yourselves.

Technical Help

It is good to appreciate some pointers from basic photography fundamentals. For many beginners, some of the common problems which they might encounter include:

Camera or subject shake due to low light condition and slow shutter speed
Messy background
Unsure of which angle to adopt

Low lighting condition and use of low ISO (both of which results in slower shutter speed) are the main culprit for camera shake and subject motion blur. If the subject is stationary, a good tripod will be useful in preventing camera shake. If you are shooting handheld, it is good to achieve a shutter speed of at least 1 / (focal length) of a second, which means that the more you zoom in (magnify the image) with your camera, it is advisable to increase the ISO to achieve a faster shutter speed. If a tripod is used, you can use a lower ISO to get a picture with less noise. However, since a slower shutter speed comes with a lower ISO, beware of tripod shake especially if you are standing on a platform with heavy vehicles moving past behind you.

If the subject is moving, a higher ISO is desirable to achieve a faster shutter speed to freeze the motion. With today’s superb technology in the Nikon system, we can achieve low level of noise in higher ISO, hence one can start the day with ISO 400 and if need be, increase the ISO should one encounter a slow shutter speed or wanting a faster shutter speed to freeze the action.

Another common problem faced by photographers is the lack of ideas as to what angle or composition to use. The tip is to identify a main subject. From there, you can conceptualise the composition and it will be easier to get the angle. It is good to spend some time exploring the various angles, shooting both horizontally and vertically. If the results are unsatisfactory, you can always delete the images later. As much as possible, follow the “Rule of Thirds” composition rule.

Many beginners also often overlook the distracting objects in the foreground and background which can draw the viewers’ attention away. Either move yourself to try to adopt different angles or you shift the subject (if possible) to get your desired picture.