Day 28 Jan 2011: We want to see images with vignettes
We want you to create a vignette for one of your images today.
If you're new to Photo Month you can find out more about it in the what is Photo Month forum.
If you're new to Photo Month you can find out more about it in the what is Photo Month forum.
Nooooooo! A carefully applied vignette can work wonders for a photograph but I see so many ruined by inappropriate vignetting.
Dark vignettes can be useful to nudge the eye away from bright corners and back into the centre of the frame. However, if you overdo it a bit, the vignette itself starts to attract attention and draw the eye out of the photograph. Overdo it a lot and you end up with something very claustrophobic. Of course, that's entirely appropriate for some shots; usually, though, it isn't. I think prashanna's example above is perfect as the vignette itself is hardly noticeable -- it just looks like good framing and concentrates the eye on the subject.
Light vignettes, in my experience, almost always ruin the photograph they're applied to. They only work where the background is naturally bright everywhere and the vignette causes the photograph to fade into that background. They work, very occasionally, on sepia portraits and almost nowhere else. When they don't work, they just make the photo look fogged and, again, the vignette attracts attention and draws the eye away from the photograph itself. The bright corner that is created is usually the exact opposite of what you want.
In my opinion, the example photo in the article is not at all appropriate for a light vignette. The Thomas Clayton barge leads the eye through the shot in the un-edited version but the light vignette obliterates it with fog on what looks like a clear day. That part of the barge is the first thing you try to look at in the photo and you don't get past that at all when it's messed about with. A dark vignette could work very well but the one applied is much, much too heavy. Something around 10-15% opacity usually works best.
Dark vignettes can be useful to nudge the eye away from bright corners and back into the centre of the frame. However, if you overdo it a bit, the vignette itself starts to attract attention and draw the eye out of the photograph. Overdo it a lot and you end up with something very claustrophobic. Of course, that's entirely appropriate for some shots; usually, though, it isn't. I think prashanna's example above is perfect as the vignette itself is hardly noticeable -- it just looks like good framing and concentrates the eye on the subject.
Light vignettes, in my experience, almost always ruin the photograph they're applied to. They only work where the background is naturally bright everywhere and the vignette causes the photograph to fade into that background. They work, very occasionally, on sepia portraits and almost nowhere else. When they don't work, they just make the photo look fogged and, again, the vignette attracts attention and draws the eye away from the photograph itself. The bright corner that is created is usually the exact opposite of what you want.
In my opinion, the example photo in the article is not at all appropriate for a light vignette. The Thomas Clayton barge leads the eye through the shot in the un-edited version but the light vignette obliterates it with fog on what looks like a clear day. That part of the barge is the first thing you try to look at in the photo and you don't get past that at all when it's messed about with. A dark vignette could work very well but the one applied is much, much too heavy. Something around 10-15% opacity usually works best.
In some of my urbex corridor shots i feel vignette adds some depth to the image.
