It's funny how deceiving a photograph can be. I wouldn't blame anyone for thinking that this roller skater has turned his head to check out the girl on her phone as he skates past her. Without any context, that does appear to be the story here.
There are many different reasons that photographers love photography. Almost always any individual photographer’s interest is a mixture of multiple aspects.
One of the byproducts of the new-wave approach to street photography, which champions anonymity, mystery, and a cinematic aesthetic, is that there is an absolute abundance of images featuring silhouetted figures and shadow play. These are the kind of images I started off creating, and there are some fantastic artists who have utilized this style over the years, my favorite of these being Fan Ho, one of the classic progenitors of this style.
There is an excellent quote regarding practice attributed to legendary martial artist Bruce Lee that I think provides a great framework for many pursuits but also highlights one of my earliest struggles with ideas around “style” in photography: “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”
There seems to be a trend in current photography goals to achieve a “look” to one's work. I feel this is a short-sighted goal, and that a consistent aesthetic is more the result of careful curation of a large body of work, rather than something that ought to be deliberately achieved.
There are so many factors to potentially juggle for any given street/documentary situation that eye contact for me tends to fall a bit to chance -- if it happens it happens and if it doesn’t it doesn’t. It is rarely something I feel makes or breaks an image, but more frequently I’ve been thinking about what specific function working to achieve (or deliberately avoid) eye contact could offer to my photographs.
Whenever I travel for photography, there’s a real sense of anticipation for the scenarios I might face, the feeling that the next great moment is just around the corner. As a street and documentary photographer, my intention when traveling is not to see “the sights”, or to eat the foods, or to hear the music -- instead, it is specifically to meet the people and see what aspects of myself exist in foreign situations.
Sometimes you know about two things in completely different parts of your brain, and then one day, for no reason, you put them together and your head explodes — a cascade of understandings like the last scene in “Usual Suspects”. After 40 years of taking pictures, that happened to me. One idea changed me overnight. And if you have a camera it will change you, too.
I've noticed that a commonly used compliment for street photographs is to describe them as "timeless." My interpretation of this is that it is used to mean that there are characteristics of the image which in some way transcend the boundaries of the context it was made in and can exist almost in its own context, its own space.
Creativity is, in some respects, intangible. It does not have a physical form. It cannot be distilled and sold in bottles. It cannot be summoned at will, and if it does happen to show its face, there is no guarantee that it will stick around.
The scene through the viewfinder was one of pastoral beauty: a thatched and jettied cottage, with colorful Gertrude Jekyll borders full of Lupins.
Yes, it's post-processed. I get this question all the time, like every other photographer on the planet, and it often sparks heated debates that challenge the notion of objective reality and the meaning of photography.
Emotional Intelligence (EI) is the capability of individuals to recognize their own, and other people's, emotions, to discern between different feelings and label them appropriately, to use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior, and to manage and/or adjust emotions to adapt environments or achieve one's goal(s).
I’d like to share some thoughts here on being a musician before I get to the difference between seeing and looking as a photographer. Please bear with me. This will all make good sense.
At the end of my photo workshops, and during my seminars, I often ask the participants a simple question: “What does your photography mean to you?”
It’s been around a year since I switched to photographing on 35mm film for the majority of my work. Beyond a couple of false starts and some misconceptions, I think I’ve adjusted well, and I’m really happy to have made the change. Now that I have a good amount of work to reference, I’ve been thinking a lot about some of the adjustments I needed to make in order to adapt to a film mindset.
Photographer Sean Tucker's latest video is a departure from the gear or technique videos that typically make the rounds in the photo world. In fact, it's not even specifically about or for photographers. It's for all artists, and it's about the importance of understanding (and balancing) your ego.
Being a monk who has photographed monastic communities from many years now, many people have asked me if I have something to share from my experience. Well, there isn't much.
How do I find my style? It’s a question that inevitably comes up for almost every photographer actively trying to improve their images. It’s a tough question, at first. Because at first, you don’t really know what that means. Many photographers think that “style” is just equal to how someone might edit their images.
I’ve always had a fascination with geometry and man-made structures, their perfection has a strong attraction on me. It took me time to realize that what I appreciated most wasn’t necessarily their symmetry or the simple repetition of shapes but the parallelism between the various elements of the construction of an image.
One of my images has been subjected to criticism and scrutiny in a way that none of my other work ever has. The photograph in question is of a scene in London, Chinatown; a man reaches into a sewer while shouting about how someone threw his needles down there.
Where is the line between acceptable photo manipulation and cheating in photography? That's the question photographer Jamie Windsor asks and explores in this new 12-minute video.
Here's my favorite quote from Jay Maisel, one of the legends in the world of photography: "If you want to make more interesting pictures, become a more interesting person." As photographers, we often get bored in the place we live and we want to travel as much as possible to get different and more interesting pictures.
What if you had the same camera, lighting and subject matter as everyone else. A groundhog day for a photographer so to speak. If we all have the same gear what would make you different?
When most people think of the word Zen, a meditating monk in a monastery comes to mind, a practice of enlightenment, a person being in the present or someone without attachments. When I think of Zen, I think of a lifestyle that has profoundly influenced my photography practice. I would like to dive into the ways of zen photography and how it might enlighten your creative practice.
I found an image that I don't want to see. Too familiar, and so, too hurtful. But as the Internet meme jokes, "What has been seen can't be unseen." In that context, such images are considered shocking, graphic, violent. The image I refer to, however, is far removed from any of these labels. But for me, there it is, that Punctum that Barthes spoke of. As I write, Google Chrome suggests the correct spelling is 'puncture' -- how appropriate.
Here's an inspiring 14-minute TEDx Talk by photographer Billy Weeks about documentary photography. Weeks explores that specific moment in which a photographer and subject "intersect with a single point of view."
The other night I couldn't sleep (too much coffee at 5 pm) and was in bed scrolling through my Facebook feed, when this ad for the Samsung Gear 360° camera came up (below), with the instruction to "capture more of the moment." Through my groggy state of semi-consciousness, it hit me in a new way. We don't need to capture more, we need to hone a vision. If anything, we need to capture less. More wheat, less chaff.
As creatives, we all go through a very similar journey when it comes to improving our skill. Though details of the turbulent ride vary for everyone, it always boils down to two things; the how, and the why.
We tend to treat the ethics of taking photographs in a very much black and white fashion. We judge "He should never have shot that" or alternatively "She is on firm ground shooting that, it is OK" and then arguments revolve around that, never resolving anything.