How do i make my photographs pop

[pollen]

The more I do photography, the more I realise that all other reasons are secondary or minor or trivial in the part they play in making a photo pop.

The only major factor remains the quality of the light.

[OzzieTraveller]

G'day pollen

Your observation is - to a fair extent- quite correct
Most of us are guilty of just asking the camera "is the quantity of light enough for me to hand-hold and go 'click'.
Whereas with most of the fab images I see, I find that the quality of the light is what actually makes the photo stand out from the crowd .... and it often goes together with the other side of things, that of having a very good understanding of the camera's controls and the image perspective one obtains from the lenses available to you

The other day I was out in western Qld at Winton, and looked at images in the annual Waltzing Matilda photo comp. One I recall showed some old stockyards, the old timber post 'n rail type - nothing special on its own
The photographer had done several things to make it 'special' ...
1- recognised that the light in the sky had a sparkle to it;
2- chosen a super-wide lens;
3- sat on the ground to get a very low viewpoint, looking upwards

The resulting image was of the post 'n rail fencing being very dominant onto a beautiful blue sky with feathery clouds streaking by, the super-wide lens gave it the effect of having a series of cloudy-lines all going back to the same starting point

Very nice image, got its owner a $500 prize

Regards, Phil

[ladysith]

Awesome topic, I'll be keeping this in mind once I get my own SLR. ^_^

I've currently been using Photoshop Actions (from deviantart) to PP some of my P&S photos. So far so good.