Learning: A Life Long Adventure

by Brian Posted on March 8, 2012

I had a brief but eye-opening conversation by e-mail with a student yesterday about priorities. She has prioritized learning over the latest and greatest doodads and is investing her time and money in “learning to be a photographer.” The thing that immediately struck me is the similarity between her as a beginner and me as a life-long photographer. I too am investing significant time and money in learning to be a photographer this year. Moreover, it something that I do every year.

While I have a degree in photography, I can’t really say that I “learned to be a photographer” in school. My class time did, however, prepare me to be a photographer, broaden my horizons, and introduce me to new genres of photography, photographers, and ideas. Today, my formal education serves as a valuable foundation for furthering my knowledge informally.

And, that is really my point here. Despite the degree and everything else that I have done to educate myself, my eduction as a photographer continues today and will continue for the rest of my life. While everyone learns differently, here are few suggestions (all tested by me) for educating yourself:

  • Look at the images in Vanity Fair and Vogue every month. (You can read the articles as well if they interest you.) The images in these magazines are some of the best images in any magazine.
  • Read a photography magazine.
  • Read your camera and flash manuals from cover to cover. You don’t want to be fumbling with your camera when the Vulcans make first contact with humans or a Red-Pileated Woodpecker lands in your backyard.
  • Attend a lecture or workshop about art.
  • Look at paintings by Edward Hopper, Andrew Wyeth, Rembrandt, Warhol, and others, pay particular attention to the colors, composition, and perspective on the subject.
  • Visit a photography exhibit. The National Gallery of Art has at least one photography exhibit at all times (unless it is between exhibits). I highly recommend the International Center for Photography in New York as well.
  • Meet, befriend, and interact with other photographers better than you. While intimidating, interacting with photographers better than you is a great way to learn.
  • Experiment. Try new filters, new techniques, a Lensbaby, and unique perspectives (get down on the ground or up in a helicopter). Mix it up.
  • Give yourself a project for the day, month, or year. Last year, I set myself the goal of taking an image every day. Some were good, some were bad but I taught myself about discipline and I am better at spotting potential images after completing it.
  • Practice, practice, practice and then practice some more. Be sure to carry a camera with you WHEREVER you go.

Even if you enjoy learning, I really think that this is about being the best photographer possible, which is my goal. So, make learning a life long adventure.

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Vision aka Creativity, Technique, and Gear

by Brian Posted on February 4, 2012

I recently spoke to a camera club about what creativity is, why we freeze when we need to be creative, and how we can improve our creativity. Based on my reading of a variety of scientific papers, popular psychology articles, “self-help” books and articles, writings by photographers and other artists, and my own experience, I came to the following conclusions:

  • Creativity is a combination of inspiration and perspiration, i.e., thinking it AND doing it. You can have the best idea ever for photographing the Grand Tetons but, if you don’t take the picture, you can hardly claim to have been creative because you created nothing!
  • We generally don’t fail at creativity. We simply don’t recognize when we are creative, e.g., changing a recipe to make it more to our liking or putting together a deal at the office. When we do fail, it is most often because we fear failure or criticism. A corollary to this is: Everyone is creative.
  • To improve our ability to be creative, it takes practice, practice, and more practice both within our chosen genre and outside it. If you are a nature photographer, take portraits to improve your creativity; if you are a portraitist, photograph some flowers or landscapes. Familiarity breeds complacency.

So, what does creativity have to do with gear and technique? Everything! While some might say that vision or creativity is everything. I simply can’t agree. If you have the vision for a photograph but don’t have the technique or the equipment to make the image, you can’t really be creative because you can’t turn that vision into reality.

My approach to the question of vision, technique, and gear is more nuanced than most. I think that any one of them can be more important than another depending on the image and what you want to accomplish with the image. While creativity is important in all images, gear can be too. Some wildlife images, particularly of birds, simply require long glass and, without it, some images are just impossible or nearly so.

Don’t get me wrong here! I believe that creativity is the heart and soul of any photograph, particularly a great one, e.g., Moon over Half Dome. However, let’s not forget technique, e.g., lighting, and gear, e.g., wide-angle lenses for landscapes, are sometimes necessary to the creative process.

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What I Learned from My Image a Day Resolution in 2011

by Brian Posted on January 25, 2012

I know, I know…I said that I would tell you what I learned from  my image a day exercise right after the new year and today, while after January 1, 2012, isn’t shortly after January 1. I simply got behind schedule preparing for my classes on Lightroom, the Nik plugin suite, and flash (the kind used to illuminate subjects not the kind banned from Apple products) and this post had to wait until I was done with those classes.

So, without further delay, here is what I learned or had an insight about:

  • It isn’t easy to take a picture every day when you have a full time job and have a life to live. Things get in the way.
  • It is impossible to get a “good” image every day, at least one that satisfies my definition of a “good” image. After a long day, you are sometime not very creative!
  • There is no such thing as a irredeemable image. However, I will readily concede that some photographs aren’t very good (Image for June 5, 2011), some are real stinkers (Image for August 11, 2011), and some exceed all expectations (Image for May 19, 2011).
  • You can learn something from every photograph that you take, whether good or bad, processed or not, deleted or saved. In the end, you can learn as much from the good ones as the not so good ones and I had some real stinkers to learn from.
  • When you look back at a year’s catalog of photographs, you can learn a lot about yourself. At the end of 2011, I could easily see the genres of photography that I favored, e.g., nature, and others that I completely ignored, e.g., portraits.
  • If you want to improve your photography, nothing works like practice and having a resolution or dedicating yourself to a project is a good way to make sure that you take pictures. In 2011, I took almost 100,000 images. (The grip on my Nikon D700 became well worn in 2011.)
  • An open-ended project, such as an image a day, allows you to experiment and take images that you otherwise wouldn’t take. Of those 100,000 images, I deleted about 67,000. In the first couple of months as it became clear how hard it was to take an image every day, I stopped self-censoring myself and allowed myself to experiment. Most of the experiments were dismal failures but some were not and you will see more of those this year.
  • As a result of experimentation, you start to see and take images that you never would have taken before. I did (Image for December 24, 2011).

I consider the last year one of my best. In large part because of this exercise, I certainly “see” more and better than before I took on this resolution. I have also picked up on a new goal for 2012: To improve my portrait skills.

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Image for December 31, 2011

by Brian Posted on December 31, 2011

This image of the beach at Rehoboth Beach, DE, completes my resolution for 2011 to take and post an image every day. While not all of them got posted on the day they were taken, I did take an image every day during the year to post on this blog. In some cases, the image was posted a day or two later because I didn’t have access to the Internet or for some other unavoidable reason. What an experience! I learned a lot and will post a summary early next week.

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