Facebook did it to me again. A headline promised me I could master photography easily. It sent me (I couldn’t help it, I was curious) to an infographic about apertures and shutter speeds and focus modes and rules of thirds. I read it all. And when I was done I knew exactly what I knew when I was 15 years …
Your Next Step: Unified Work
If you’ve read my latest eBook, Making The Image, you know I’m a big fan of questions. Always have been. Questions open us to possibilities, especially when they lead to more questions, experimentation, increased curiosity, and play. This is the last in a series of articles about the power of four particular questions to drive our work forward. The first …
Your Next Step: Narrative Work
The third in a series of questions I encourage students to ask themselves, and frankly, they’re questions I still ask myself – is this one: does my work tell a story? Of course there’s a question that needs to be asked before any other: is story the best tool for the job? Not every photograph has to tell a story. …
Your Next Step: Vital Work
Nothing, but nothing, makes a stronger photograph than it being alive. Not perfect focus, not a great exposure. Life. Spark. Energy or emotion that gives you goosebumps and doesn’t let you go all day. Earlier this week I encouraged you to consider the question: is my work authentic? as one way to take a next step in your photographic work. …
Your Next Step: Authentic Work.
If you’re at the place where you no longer wrestle as much with the basics of exposure and focus, it could be time to work on the photographs themselves: on content and composition, on vision and the deeper aspects of your craft and art. There are 4 questions I keep encouraging my students to ask themselves as they consider their …
Consider Your Colour Palette
One of the things you’ll notice consistently about the bodies of work of photographers who’ve been doing this a while, is that many of them, though not all, seem to work very intentionally to create a consistency within that body of work – some kind of unifying element. Often that element is on a theme, so it’d be a body …
Learn to Isolate More
Isolation: Use a Longer Lens The Visual Toolbox, Lesson 13 Nikon D800, 300mm, 1/400 @ f/11. ISO 800 This Whooper swan was photographed tight with a 300mm lens. Telephoto lenses, anything over a 35mm equivalent of 50-60mm, have the opposite effect of a wide angle, and the longer they get (200, 300, 600mm) the greater the difference. As telephoto lenses …
Approval & Art
It is a short step from learning to use a camera to hoping others like what we create. It’s a natural step. But when the next step is allowing the tastes of others to change what we create, it’s a step in a direction that leads away from art. We are responsible for our art, and to be honest with …
Learn To Isolate
This Red Crowned crane was among many, but isolated with a longer lens it creates more impact within the frame than it might have surrounded by context. POINT OF VIEW The first and most obvious way to isolate elements with the frame is the intentional use of point of view. What appears and does not appear, in front of, around, …
Chasing Photographic Style.
We value style, forms of expression so unique to shooters that you can identify their work immediately. Show me a Jill Greenberg photograph, or an Annie Leibovitz cover and their name comes to mind without a conscious thought, much less looking for the photo credit. So valued is the notion of style that it won’t be long before someone writes …