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How do you become a good photographer?
Atget or Lartigue ? You can study, and do one thing exceptionally well; or you can study, and do (seemingly) everything really well. In "The Arts" (whatever they are) there is much emphasis placed on finding one's own "voice"; the uniqueness that sets one apart from the rest. "Saying" something new or in a new way, is highly prized. Imitation, followed by study, followed by invention are probably the key steps, but always doing something. There's no shame in imitating some style and excelling at it, but it's probably more "craftsmanship" than "artistry". But in "The Arts" that's disparaged because one goal of "The Arts" is to be unique. Then again, wft do I know? Jul 14 13 07:04 am Link Light Writer wrote: It may be stupid but this is exactly why I'm self taught, I didn't want to be influenced by what others liked. However I'm finding myself at a level that is hard to get past. Jul 14 13 11:06 am Link You have 3 (maybe 4) magic bullets in photography (talking very broadly here, applies to most branches of photography): 1) Subject 2) Light 3) Composition 4 - Prime lenses Pretty much in that order. If you have a beautiful/visually interesting subject you'll be making good (not great) images, even if you aren't a great photographer. I'm talking here about tall jaw-dropping models vs the average looking girl, I'm talking about breathtaking landscapes vs the back yard, war photography vs photographing the local football match... you get the idea. Light. Light can makes or break an image. Learn to see and understand light. Learn to find the best light when shooting available light or learn to light properly using artificial lighting (flash, strobes, etc). Composition - Study (old masters' paintings are great) and practice (play a lot with different compositions), rule of thirds is a good start. Good prime lenses are superior in every way to the zooms most people use. Extra bonus they are lighter and usually cheaper (the middle of the road ones usually are very cheap and still pretty good). They will give you more light, more separation for your subject, they will slow you down and make you think about your composition and they'll also force you to change your distance to your subject so you change perspective. Jul 14 13 11:29 am Link When I find out, I'll let you know. Jul 14 13 11:43 am Link A lot of the question you're asking has to do with choosing what kind of images you want to be good at. It's entirely different approaches for different types of shots. The most depressed about photography I ever got was while looking at a book of shots a taxi driver took by just pointing his camera out the window and clicking as he drove. Obviously a lot of culling was involved, but the skill of the "artist" behind the lens was almost nil. If you want to shoot models well, take advice and copy styles from people who do work you admire. Do you want to do fashion or something else? They're different in terms of mindset when approaching the shoot. I'm still trying to find my own way when it comes to models. I'm approaching it, for the moment as a photoshopper. I'm mentally picturing different shots than are the people who shoot nudes on seamless. I'm currently trying to create images in front of the camera I'd otherwise have to find 15 different source images for when sitting at the computer. If you want to shoot sports, weddings, news, portraits or catalogs, the technical knowledge (camera, lighting, etc.) is the same, but the ways you go about shooting, planning a shoot (or not), and other elements is going to be different. Good luck finding a voice. Jul 14 13 11:44 am Link There is a way and it is practical and yet you will need to exibit indeferance. One of the greatly said axiums in photography is to undrstand the shadows when making a photograph, yet there woulkd seem to be no practical way to do this. Like much of the several pages of posts you are handed abstracts. What you need are solid principles. Nice to say but to learn these things one must come at them as you glance at a reflection in a mirror. Not easy, not easy at all. But there is a practical way to glance into the mirror while not realy looking at all. Let me say that the problem with discovering the potential as an artist is that it does not happen in the direct fashion. That is the notion of a sideways glance into a mirror. But you do think with the other part of your brain (that old left half and right half) which is logic driven and it has nada to do with the other side which does creative/art. Whats a body to do? Trick the logic side and give it a fully distraction so that your creative part will sneak about and show you the way to arytistic expression. Here is what to do. Find a old school slide projector, does not need to be special nor have features other than to project a 35mm slide (youcoukld borrow one, lots of photographers have them in their closet, at the back, on the floor). You will need some (12 to20) graphic images. Best to go to a public library and check out a book with clip art in it. You are looking for graphic represented images that have repeating forms, not big things, more like small repeating patterns. Get a 35mm camera and some color slide filmand copy the images, best to find a shady side of a building and it is flat art so fastshutter speed and low f stop. You don't care if it has a color cast when it comes back from a processor. You just want graphic patterns to put into the projector. Get a FEMALE figure model (males have too much body hair), only requirnemnts are that they need to be about average weight to body mass and absolutly no tatoos. You will ONLY be concerned with feet, hands orthe head by enlarge. Have them lay on a table top (folding tables are great) and put a cussion down and cover the cussion with matt black cloth. Put the projector on a stand (tripods are great for this) and put in the first slide. Project this onto the body and find a place to focus the projector. You will of coursehave turned off allthe lights but usualy a small low watage lamp to see as you move about the table/model. You are not concerned about the usual photo issues just basic correct high light exposure. If it is a little high or low matters not. You are not worried about shadow detail, in fact it is eaxactly what youare not interested in. In post or the camera you will be looking at elivated contrast. Thoes are the basics for the whole thing. What you realy want to attend to is looking at the highlights that are falling all over the contour of the human form. Now that logic brain of yours, you will unleash it now. It will attend to and ferrit out any nipples, pubic area and that damn navel! That logical brain is your Marine, your super hero at the sevice of your bidding! Keep after these three nasty areas. These must be kept in the shadows at all times and costs. I'm realy NOT joking here. Now in post you are going to do a lot of printing out full frame. You will go high contrast and you will print out on typing paper as if these were e-mails. NOW you are ready to inhase your visual aquity and totaly give your logic a vacation. Tou will need two tools, an exacto knife with that vicious pointy No. 11 blade. The other item is that old school thing "White-Out". Yep, you will cut out areas and remove small black parts with the old white out. BUT, you will need in addition a cheap fine point black pen. Where things don't look good you will draw out a line and even fill it in with extra ink. When you are done you will have lovely geometric images, but the filter they will have run through will be the human form as a contouring of the basic geometric form that you projected. If they look like a human being, your logic brain let you down and now after scolding it you will need to get another model (or the same, matters not) and do the exercise all over again. (Extra credit: Let the model play with the paper print out, see if she sees differently than you did. Now, not to worry, there is no right or wrong to this. Scale does not even matter! Big secret revealed. In the end all draws from the print outs will either have a bird like form or will have a fish like form. Weird, but true. NOW, go do the exercises that people sugest to you. It is weird but you will discover a vary shocking thing, you have a whole new set of eyes. You will not be able to understand the why but you will begin to see in a whole new hay, it will be more creative, more visual. After a while you will discover that what has happened is that youare now intuativly seeing shadows in a way that you never saw them before. I have delivered this exercise in visula managenment through a new intutive understanding of shadows and what they do with in three dimensional space. Photographers who are NOT interested in nudes nor even people as subjects have found it helped their visulsation of 3D space and the way to convert that 3D space into 2D space. As you exercise your working vision you will find that you will 'improve' your ability to visulaze. You can then begin to take point with issues like ideas, intent, phylosophy, story and the like. But you must learn to visulize first. Jul 14 13 08:34 pm Link A mentor Jul 14 13 08:46 pm Link I took a class with Jay Maisel once and a student had asked, after showing Jay his portfolio, "how do I take more interesting photographs?" Jay said, "stand in front of more interesting stuff." Jul 15 13 07:23 am Link The best photographer I've ever known quit at age 22. He took up writing, which to him was hard. Photography, he said, was just target practice. Some people will excel. Some won't. Some need a lot of practice. Some don't. However, educating oneself about how and why photography works cannot hurt. Then, if you have any talent at all, it'll be easier to exploit it. Jul 15 13 07:41 am Link Image Magik wrote: True to an extent... BUT... you're gonna have to have at least a few minor successes sprinkled in with all those failures... or you're gonna get disenchanted and lose photographic interest in short order... Jul 15 13 12:53 pm Link Light Writer wrote: if you want to say something new, it's best to learn the language first. Jul 25 13 12:44 am Link How about not being cheesy Jul 25 13 12:59 am Link Timothy Bell wrote: That's interesting. What is it that you can't get past? Jul 25 13 07:48 pm Link Timothy Bell wrote: An ongoing and unrelenting editing backlog, which forces one to learn efficiency and image narrowing/selection skills. Timothy Bell wrote: I place high value on self-teaching, and question the usefulness of workshops with conditions that can't be reproduced on your own anytime soon, such as advanced lighting, exclusive venues, or models you'd never get on your own. Jul 25 13 07:53 pm Link Yugoboy wrote: Why does a photographer need to be great or even good? It's not a competition, the point is to make great photos. If you flat out suck and can get a great photo through sheer luck by spray and pray, who cares? You decided you wanted to make a great photo and you did. Jul 25 13 07:57 pm Link Some never become good photographers!  Jul 25 13 08:00 pm Link Andrei Ivan wrote: +1. Jul 25 13 08:00 pm Link Mikey McMichaels wrote: I shot landscapes for years, before digital photography and photo editing software, I was pretty descent at it. I started shooting people around the time that I started using digital. I use to think that if I got better at Photoshop that I could make images on par with much better photographers, not that I couldn't use some improvement in Photoshop now but I did get better at it, just enough to know that it wasn't true. I realized that my lighting wasn't what it should be and that I should know how to control my light better. I've been working on that for years and yet when I look at my final images I'm still not seeing truly great images. In the last couple years I've started into model photography where you need to be able to really control light and I have yet to get to that point. It's like playing piano, I can play the music but I haven't found what it takes to move an audience. Jul 25 13 08:59 pm Link You become better by buying a most expensive camera and charging lots of dosch! Ka-ching! Riding the gravy train with bisquit wheels  Jul 25 13 09:06 pm Link Timothy Bell wrote: Take class's. Read, practice, practice, practice till you die. You will always be trying to perfect your skills. Jul 25 13 09:16 pm Link R.EYE.R wrote: Buy your way to greatness...done and done...holy crap I'm poor now. Jul 25 13 09:16 pm Link Practice practice practice  Jul 25 13 09:29 pm Link Timothy Bell wrote: Welcome to the club.. Jul 25 13 09:38 pm Link Timothy Bell wrote: While I believe what I'm about to say applies, it's not directed at you, it's me discussing elements of ideas that I've been considering for quite a while. My motivation is to give you some words or ideas that will lead you to the ideas that figure out how to stay self-taught and get past the point you feel stuck in. Jul 26 13 01:39 am Link ChiMo wrote: +100 It's easy to correct over or underexposure for next time. It's even relatively easy to correct compositional errors. How does one correct an "error", though (one where someone says it's a "snapshot" or one where it's a really technical mistake, like a horizon on the wrong line or a model with her fingers pointed in the wrong direction??) Jul 27 13 12:48 am Link How do become a good..Artist, scientist, lover... Use your imagination! be creative! break the rules! Jul 29 13 04:30 pm Link Timothy Bell wrote: There's a school of thought about art. Jul 29 13 06:39 pm Link Now that I think about this more, I have concluded there is no such thing. That's like asking to define good art. It is in the eye of the beholder. If your images please you, then you have achieved something. But, I'll bet that every single photographer that looks at their older images can identify "improvements". That's because art is a moving target. Your impression of artistic will change with time. So I guess that means, what you thought was artistic two years ago, now isn't artistic anymore? It's a journey not an end point. Jul 29 13 06:52 pm Link study quality images to help you develop a sophisticated eye. (and, sorry to say, you will have to look very hard to find them on model mayhem.) if you develop a tacky eye, you will at best become a very proficient tacky photographer. you can start with tumblrs like: http://apostrophe9.tumblr.com/ Jul 29 13 07:11 pm Link http://gizmodo.com/the-10-most-expensiv … -866891077 maybe good art is based on how much an image sells for? Jul 29 13 07:28 pm Link Jay Maisel told me in a class, become a better person... Jul 29 13 07:30 pm Link Great advice..... Jul 30 13 01:31 am Link Timothy Bell wrote: This is ironic to the point of comical. The fact that you're self-taught does not mean you were not influence by what others liked. You simply taught yourself based on what others liked. Jul 30 13 06:48 am Link Try everything, variety, and creativity go hand in hand . . . unless you are willing to try things, even ones out of your comfort zone, you'll never know what you're capable of . . . even on straight commercial shoots, I'll push the angles a bit more, play with the lighting a little, get the models to give me a little extra twist, squeeze into the most uncomfortable space, the client may not always appreciate the final image, but at least I tried it . . . an old trick I learned was to shoot in threes, it used to be you bracketed for lighting, now its more for look, even the best image will have a "best" out of three . . . and seeing the subtle differences that makes that so, is always an education . . . SOS Jul 30 13 06:55 am Link Kincaid Blackwood wrote: Maybe you don't like the wording of the statement, but I'm trying to get across that I want to shoot in ways that are pleasing to me and I don't want to be taught that there is a certain way to shoot something and rely on that rather than finding something that works for me. If you want to get technical there isn't a single thought in the world that isn't influenced by someone else. Jul 30 13 07:08 am Link I'm responding to points out of order for the sake of relevancy. Timothy Bell wrote: While true, that's not where I went with the statement. Did you bother to read what else I posted? Timothy Bell wrote: There's a generalized assumption (more or less from people who've never been to an art school or people who've been to shitty ones) that structured learning programs are designed to teach you that there's a certain way to shoot (or create art). No program worth the money the charge for tuition takes that stance. The simple reason is they would quickly get a rep for trying to brainwash artists to be a certain way and no parent would send their child to a school like that and no graduate student would waste money on a program like that. Jul 31 13 05:34 pm Link Good photography will come naturally to you once you start focusing on things you're passionate about or have an interest in. Whether it's a specific kind of fashion, creating cosplay sessions, shooting nudes, coming up with elaborate concepts, etc. (the list can be endless, it just depends on what you're into - and I don't know what that is). But once you start shooting what you like and make your own rules, everything else will start to fall in place too, which is the overall progress and quality of your original shots, the improvement on angles and perspective and last but not least, the creative vision you will eventually settle on during post production. Jul 31 13 05:47 pm Link Giacomo Cirrincioni wrote: This made me LOL! Thanks! Jul 31 13 06:22 pm Link Kincaid Blackwood wrote: I would agree that I have this assumption, I've heard it numerous times from friends and colleagues and as such believe it to be the norm. Jul 31 13 07:43 pm Link |
