seeing

Seeing Versus Shooting as a Photographer

The photographer Dorothea Lange once famously said “A camera is a device that teaches you to see without a camera.” I always loved this quotation. Once you get good at shooting, you start to see the world like a photographer — you notice things, you notice light, you look slower, you take pictures in your mind. The camera saves them, but even without one, you see differently.

The Art of Seeing as a Photographer

When I look back at my journey as a wildlife photographer especially as I scroll through my images on my editing screen a few things become apparent. Firstly, most of my pictures were either action or close up portrait, and secondly, the editing was awful.

I Shot Nothing But B&W Photos for a Year, and I’m Better For It

I’m not sure on what day I realized that my street photography work had become overly homogeneous, and sometimes asinine. “Oh look, a red car and a red shirt. click.” I’d been in love with the look of Fujifilm’s Classic Chrome (based off of Kodak Kodachrome) and had begun to shoot a lot of color for color’s sake.

What Parallelism Is and How to Use it to Improve Your Photography

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.

Henri Cartier-Bresson on Learning to Look

Here's a clip from an old interview in which legendary photographer and street photography pioneer Henri Cartier-Bresson was asked about the art of seeing. His answer probably isn't what you'd expect.

How to Find the Perfect Angle

You know those moments when you're chimping and wonder why that amazing shot that you thought was going to be, well, amazing just isn't? Your exposure was right - check; white balance - check; aperture - check; shutter - check. Lens... hmm. Let's see. Lens? Yes, I shot with the right lens. If you are shooting competently and things are still not working out like you would want them to, I have a great piece of advice for you.

How I Saw the World Before and After I Became a Photographer

About two years ago, I used to go about my usual everyday life like most people do, not noticing all of the beauty around me. After I picked up a camera and started taking photos of my kids, I started to see the world in a whole new way. Once you start to see it, you can't unsee it.

Don’t Let Snapshots Keep You From Seeing the World

When people notice something interesting or beautiful these days, there's often a natural impulse to pull out their smartphones and snap a photo of it, preserving that moment and memory. But "there's a big problem associated with [this]," says The School of Life in the 3-minute video above. "We're likely to be so busy taking the pictures we forget to look at the world whose beauty and interest prompted us to take a photograph in the first place."

Seeing is the Essence of Photography, And You Can Learn to Do It Better

Photography is an analytic art form. We aim our lenses to specific parts of the world around us to pick a frame because, in our analysis, that particular frame presents the photograph we wish to take. We can certainly raise the camera, lower the camera, rotate it, pitch it, yaw it, aim at a different part and end up photographing something different.

You should realize that there are infinite number of photographs you can take from where you are now. How then do we aim the camera to “that particular frame” to photograph?

Male and Female Photographers See the World Differently

If you think male and female photographers sometimes have very different styles, the reason might go beyond their tastes and approaches to shooting. Men and women see the world differently -- literally. A new study by vision researchers have found that the two genders have different ways of collecting visual information.

According to the findings, men are more sensitive to moving objects and seeing small details, while women tend to be sharper in seeing color changes.