This interview with Camille Seaman is packed with so much goodness. She talks about using natural lighting in shooting subjects as varied as giant icebergs to TIbetans who don’t use lights indoors at all during the day. More importantly what really struck a chord is how WHO a photographer is plays a central role in their work.
What would you suggest if we just want to get better sports shots of the friends and family?
You know, two of the things that I would suggest are that. One: clean. That is my biggest thing that I am looking for in an Image is make your background clean. Clean up those backgrounds, make the image, the personal subject pop out of the frame. So think of yourself as a director and you are placing people on the screen. So you are the person who gets to place them there you get to pick the screen. So when you are shooting your photos clean up those backgrounds, nothing to distract what is going on so you can focus right on that subject.
Any final tips for our viewers who just want to get better photographs?
You know the one of the biggest things that I think the imagers struggle with is taking their off full automatic. You know I would say learn that camera. Put it on semi-automatic, your time value, your actual priority, learn how those functions work. And the biggest most important thing that I think now is that you can shoot ‘raw’. Sure it is an intimidating thing you get these huge files you have to manage them. But it’s like having a negative. It’s like having a fujichrome velvia and you get to print that image whatever way you want. When I see students work who had gone from jpeg to raw during one class session. It’s amazing, and they come back and say “I will never shoot jpeg againî. So that would be the biggest tip I have for everybody-’Shoot raw’.
To see more of John’s work click here
There isn’t just one type of light. There are 4 main types, and Karl Taylor does a great job of explaining them in this video about the various types of light.
Knowing the type of light that you’re dealing with can change the way you shoot the scene. He also has great tips on how to shoot with natural light using a reflector. This 10 minute video can completely change the way you see light.
John Lennon Memorial, Central Park, NYC
What’s your most essential tool as an artist? While the right equipment can be an enormous aide to your success, we’ve all seen artists who can create with very little. And who runs all that fancy gear and tells it what to do?
Imagination is what gets the creative process started and keeps it rolling. It’s what drives your whole creative flow, as you can see from Picasso, “I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.”
Michelangelo said, ”I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” He removed the marble until his vision appeared to others the way he had imagined it.
But if this is such a major tool, why has it been battered down since we were kids? You can remember being hit by zingers like, “that’s just your imagination” or “nice pipe-dream” Yep, there seems to be those who would just as soon send you to camp bummer as see you as create your next piece of art.
So, if it’s the key to the whole game, then what? Are we all born with a certain amount of it and have to just watch it diminish as we grow up?
How about exercising your imagination? I mean like a regular exercise program. Yes, you can develop this creative skill, like any other skill that you practice.
Here’s a few ways to do so.
Try this out and let’s see what happens. You can post any of the above in our Critique Group (even if you’re not a photographer, go ahead.)
Imagine…
For our first Photo-Dojo assignment of the year, we have 2 tasks for you.
The first one is to let us know what your photography goals are for 2012, whether it’s to shoot more, or post more photos in the Photo critiques group, it really is up to you. The second part of the assignment is to share a photo that illustrates “a new year”.
Good luck!
Award winning Korean photo studio Indylab shot this award winning advertisement without the aid of computer generated imagery. Instead, they manually tossed and photographed phones one at a time, and then composited all the images afterward.
Here’s a behind-the-scenes photos that gives a glimpse into how it was done:
Indylab photography BTS from indylab on Vimeo.
Have you been brainwashed about photography? What me? How absurd!
I’ll bet you have been, and it’s so deep you don’t even know it. Just like the Matrix, it’s all around and so “real” that we think this is “reality.”
Right about now you’re thinking, “come on Marc, what the hell are you talking about?”
Ok, alright, let’s jump right in, are you going to take the blue pill and forget, or the red, and find out just how deep the matrix goes down the rabbit hole? (or is it the other way around?)
Here’s the first thing you’ve been to lied about: To take a great photograph you need the newest, fastest, highest- ISO, multi-media camera out there.
To that I say, as my friend Guy Kawasaki is fond of saying, Bull Shitake!
Look at all the great photos that were taken pre-digital with fixed, low ISO, no-trick cameras.
But before you miss my point and think I’m just some old geezer who’s stuck in the glories of film and can’t go with the flow of digital, that ain’t what I’m talking about.
I’m talking about what’s really important in photography, versus what we’re being brainwashed into believing to fuel the consumer-driven industrial-photo-complex, that needs you to discard your “old” equipment that you bought just 3 years ago and shell out big bucks for the new version. That’s crap and I bet you’re starting to see just how deep this rabbit hole is (hint: this is much more than about photography, but we’ll leave the rest for another day.)
Let’s start with the basis of it all. Who makes the picture, you or the camera?
Hint: Bambi Cantrell said, “people take pictures, cameras don’t!”
How often do you need to be able to jump to 25K ISO or shoot at 8 frames per second? Show me your great photographs where this really mattered.
Now look, I love new cool stuff as much as anyone, and shoot a lot of photos on my iPhone, but I don’t kid myself into believing these will ever be great. Just because it’s been proven that you can do a fashion shoot with one, doesn’t mean you should.
I believe in using the right tool for the job. Learn your camera so well that using it becomes instinctive and get out and focus on what really matters: You, your camera, your subject and how to put them together in a frame that tells a story. Do you have this simple equation mastered?
If not, let’s get out of the Matrix for just a moment and do this for yourself, and no bull shitake about how you’re too good already to need this exercise.
1. Go over to your nearest drugstore and buy a disposable camera. You know the ones that you take back and they develop the pictures?
2. Now visualize the photos you want to make with it.
3. Then go out and make them. You only have the 12 or so exposures it comes with, no cheating
4. Post your best in our Photo-Dojo.
I will pick the best over the next 2 weeks and I’ll announce the winner August 1st. The winner will win a 38mm Diana F+ Super Wide Lens, cool eh?
And stay tuned for further installments on the Maxtrx, and how to get out.
(and I can’t wait for wisecracks from those deep in the Matrix!)
When we interviewed Bob Holmes, one of the biggest things that he wanted to share was to always be prepared. Preparation is key to getting the shot that you desire, because if you’re not prepared, you’ll miss it. Read an excerpt from our interview with him to learn more.
You can watch the video here
“One of the biggest lessons I learned was, when I first started shooting professionally…it was in 1980…I was shooting for National Geographic in Pakistan, and it was the first time I felt as if I were a real photographer, I felt really good. I’d got National Geographic film, things to send it back to Washington, and I had three cameras, all with motor-drives. I felt like a real professional. And I was shooting in a little village in a very remote part of Pakistan, and there was a shaman predicting the future for the next year. And this was a unique experience, I was the only Westerner there. I started shooting, and there’s a lot of exciting things happening…
The shaman is getting high, smelling…they’d been drinking a local brew, which was awful…it was dreadful stuff. If you served it at Betty Ford Clinic, you wouldn’t have got any takers. And it was some fermented grain from this village, and he’s getting really high on that, and smelling juniper smoke. And then they dragged a goat to the front of this group of villagers, got a machete, chopped the goats head off, and the shaman picked the goat’s head up and started drinking the blood from the goat’s head…and it was very dramatic, obviously, and I ran out of film in all three cameras.
I didn’t have a single frame left in any camera, and it’s not the sort of situation where you’re just, “Could you do that just one more time please?” And it’s a huge lesson, you know, I’ll never let that happen again. I always made sure, even if I was…and I think, coming from an amateur background, I was very careful about costs, and I would always try to get 37 frames off a 36 exposure roll, and I hadn’t got out of that mindset. After that, if I got to frame 30, I’d take the film out…and Geographic was paying for the film, but it was habit. And I learned that you always have to be prepared, because you never know what’s going to happen, and that was a very, very valuable lesson for me.”
You can find more of Bob’s work here and you can watch his video here
Bob Dylan, a radical in his time for going electric. 
All rights reserved by beastandbean
It takes courage to be great, to break away from the crowd and develop your own voice and put yourself out there.
If you’re doing what’s safe and what everyone else is, you may get a lot of “likes” and “favs,” but at the end of day are you making photographs that you love?
With our AYP Club, what I really love is to see those of you who have the courage to put your work out there and ask for critiques; that’s a good first step.
I made a pass through last night and left some comments. My basic feedback is this: Courage.
Don’t stop at the easy, the good photo that might even win a local contest. Push yourself! Have the courage to find YOUR VOICE as a photographer.
Go beyond what has been easy for you and explore your limits. In most cases this means being able to really engage your subject. But it might mean getting up at 5AM to get the best light. Or taking your camera to a rough part of town.
It’s about pushing your limits, learning what you can do and see, and help others feel what you felt.
Let’s look at an artist in another art form–Bob Dylan. He broke away from acoustic folk music, the convention at the time. He turned his music “on its head” and came out at the Newport Folk festival with his electric band and was booed at— that’s right. It’s hard to believe that an electric guitar was considered so radical, that it would shake up the status quo of what’s good music, but he did. He went on to tour the UK, again to boos, but he had the courage to push through.
Guess what, a year or two later, those same booers were buying records of the ”cutting edge” rockers. Then a few years later Dylan did it again by going back to acoustic, recording a counrty-flavored album with Jonny Cash.
Nobody could quite figure him out. He didn’t care about being successful, he just wanted to create his music and put it out there.
Ansel Adams got flack for “manipulating images” – what the hell he said, of course I am, do you see the world as a two dimensional black and white rectangle, with a black sky?
I could go on and on giving you example after example of those artists who were willing to turn their craft on its head. You can think of your own heros who did so.
So how about you? Are you putting out photos that are “safe,” in your comfort zone? Or for that matter, are you afraid of even putting your work out there for fear of criticism?
Honestly, I don’t care if our AYP Club is the biggest or the smallest. If we can help make a few more really great photographers, we’ll have accomplished our mission.
Push yourself. If you back away from shooting portraits of strangers on the street, make yourself do it. If the idea of shooting nudes makes you squirm, find someone who will pose and shoot them, in the raw.
Name out to yourself one area of photography you back away from and then make yourself shoot it.
This is our assignment for this week’s Photo Dojo. BTW, there are way more members of the Dojo than are participating. Photography is not a spectator sport! Decide if you’re there to make photographs that you love or you’re an on-looker— and if so go to a museum and look!
I believe in you and that YOU can do it. Let me see what you’ve got.
7th Grade Geometry © Marc Silber 1964
Framing is the most basic of tools for composing a photograph, or for that matter in any visual art. You are looking at life through your camera and select out the rectangle (or square) that you want your viewer to see.
Remember that framing can include the angle you choose in order to tell your story, this includes the angle from which you shoot and the angle you hold your camera, as in the shot above (taken of my 7th grade classroom.)
A great little book called How to Shoot a Movie Story, by Arthur L Gaskill and David A. Englander, discusses the power of angles, something I’ve never seen in a still photography book. Here’s a bit from the book:
“Camera angles can control an audience’s attention and reactions to a remarkable degree. They can emphasize what what you want your audience to see and how you want them to see it”
The four basic angles are:
1. High angles reduces height of the subject and slows down motion. Creates superiority for viewer. Example: If you want the viewer to have the feeling of towering over a large object shoot looking down.
2. Low angles exaggerate height and speed up motion, subject commands attention. This works well in sports for example, get down low and you’ll capture the action.
3. Side angles give depth and perspectiveto people and objects. For example, If you want to emphasize the depth of a building, shoot it from the side.
4. Flat angles are just that, taken front on and can be pretty dull.
A photographer’s best friend are his/her feet! Move around, climb up high, crouch down low. Turn your camera. See what happens!
In our AYP Club, we have weekly assignments in our Photo-Dojo group. This week’s is to go out and shoot and try each of the angles noted above. Especially force yourself to shoot from an angle or hight that you never use. Post your best in the Dojo and tell us what you learned.
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