The Perceptive Photographer

In this Episode

I found myself this week completely in love with a new Leica camera. The Leica M-D Type 262 body was announced. This camera is pretty much a standard Leica digital camera, but it lacks a digital view screen on the back of the camera. In place of the view screen is an ISO dial. So it pretty much looks like an old film Leica. Over the years, I have been been able to pretty much eliminate my GAS (gear acquisition syndrome) for camera gear. For me, gear now has to be able solving a problem. And, if I think the problem is a single time problem I rent rather than buy. Yet, this Leica seemed to haunt me all week.

Lessons from the Leica

As I got to thinking about the Leica camera, I got to wonder what it was about the camera that had me so engaged. It wasn’t the technology of the camera as I think there are other cameras who have better sensors and focusing options for the type of work I do. I also think there is huge value in the digital view screen. However, as I spent the past several days thinking about this M-D Type 262, I realized that it represented a purity and freedom in photography. You would no longer be able to look at the photos as you took them. You couldn’t stop shooting to check your shots. You would have to be present all the time. It reminded me of a more simple time in my own photography. In many ways, it represented why I still shoot film. There is a mystery, anticipation and distance that comes from not have immediate feedback. In our photography, I often times feel that  little distance can provide a wealth of information. So as I wiped the drool from my chin, I realized it wasn’t the camera per say, but rather the love of photography that the camera created in me that mattered.

I hope that as you think about new gear you are adding in your bag that you take the time to really figure out what you love about the gear. Is it a problem being solved, just something you want or does it create a ground shift in your way of thinking.

Photoshop World 2016

I an also so excited to be an instructor at Photoshop World 2016 this summer in Las Vegas. I am teaching four classes and I would love to see you down there this July. You can find more information over at www.photoshopworld.com.

If you subscribe to the Perceptive Photographer up on in iTunes, I would love to hear some feedback or have you take a few minutes for you to do a quick review up on iTunes it can help others learn about the show.

Twitter

Google+

In this Episode

I have been really interested in how storytelling happens in art. For the past several months I have been looking more an more at how motion pictures and higher-value television shows construct and tell stories. Because the medium is similar to photography, the use of lighting, location, framing, and subjects are very close to how we might use them in a still image. Motion pictures have the added benefit of language, dialog and music. As I was recently watching a number of films, the music really made an impression on me. The music could really drive a lot of our emotional responses.

Music in Motion Pictures

In his essay Film Music, Aaron Copeland suggest that music does five thing in a motion picture. It creates a more convincing atmosphere, underlines the psychology of the scene, acts as background filler, creates a sense of continuity, and asks as a underpinning theatrical build up in a scene or finale of the movie. I really found it interesting how many roles music plays in a motion picture and how they impact various aspects of the movie. There are also two types of music in a movie. Digetic and non-digetic. Digetic music is music that the actors can hear and react to, such as music on a jukebox or car radio like the barn scene in the movie Witness. Non-digetic music is the score or music that is played over the scene but the actors have no awareness.

All of that got me thinking about how to use music as an editing piece when creating a project or portfolio. As you create, edit and sequence what sort of music would play in the background. Would it be a fast paced car chase or a slow classic sonnet. As you look at your work, listen to different types of music and see how that changes your understanding of the position/placement of the images in the sequence as well as their meaning. I think that as you play with your music and images, you might find that often times there is a soundtrack playing to your images.

Photoshop World 2016

I an also so excited to be an instructor at Photoshop World 2016 this summer in Las Vegas. I am teaching four classes and I would love to see you down there this July. You can find more information over at www.photoshopworld.com.

If you subscribe to the Perceptive Photographer up on in iTunes, I would love to hear some feedback or have you take a few minutes for you to do a quick review up on iTunes it can help others learn about the show.

In this Episode

I have been really interested in how storytelling happens in art. For the past several months I have been looking more an more at how motion pictures and higher-value television shows construct and tell stories. Because the medium is similar to photography, the use of lighting, location, framing, and subjects are very close to how we might use them in a still image. Motion pictures have the added benefit of language, dialog and music. As I was recently watching a number of films, the music really made an impression on me. The music could really drive a lot of our emotional responses.

Music in Motion Pictures

In his essay Film Music, Aaron Copeland suggest that music does five thing in a motion picture. It creates a more convincing atmosphere, underlines the psychology of the scene, acts as background filler, creates a sense of continuity, and asks as a underpinning theatrical build up in a scene or finale of the movie. I really found it interesting how many roles music plays in a motion picture and how they impact various aspects of the movie. There are also two types of music in a movie. Digetic and non-digetic. Digetic music is music that the actors can hear and react to, such as music on a jukebox or car radio like the barn scene in the movie Witness. Non-digetic music is the score or music that is played over the scene but the actors have no awareness.

All of that got me thinking about how to use music as an editing piece when creating a project or portfolio. As you create, edit and sequence what sort of music would play in the background. Would it be a fast paced car chase or a slow classic sonnet. As you look at your work, listen to different types of music and see how that changes your understanding of the position/placement of the images in the sequence as well as their meaning. I think that as you play with your music and images, you might find that often times there is a soundtrack playing to your images.

Photoshop World 2016

I an also so excited to be an instructor at Photoshop World 2016 this summer in Las Vegas. I am teaching four classes and I would love to see you down there this July. You can find more information over at www.photoshopworld.com.

If you subscribe to the Perceptive Photographer up on in iTunes, I would love to hear some feedback or have you take a few minutes for you to do a quick review up on iTunes it can help others learn about the show.

Twitter

Google+

In this Episode

I have been updating the images in my digital collection. Going back in time and updating the file names, file organization and metadata. As I have been updating all the metadata fields it got me thinking about all that metadata and how we can use it to sort, search and learn about my work. As I was making the metadata consistent and clean, it occurred to me that it would nice to have some metadata fields that could be used for our visual literacy and language in our work, Sure, some of that data could be contained in keywords, collections or comments, but I think those fields already have a purpose and clouding them with a hack-a-round isn't the best idea.

I also spent some time over the past few weeks rethinking about how to use some of the current metadata fields to create more data about how my photographs work and resonate with me from changing what 0-5 stars means or how to use the color fields, there seemed to be some interesting options for moving a step closer to having more meaningful metatdata.

Photoshop World 2016

I an also so excited to be an instructor at Photoshop World 2016 this summer in Las Vegas. I am teaching four classes and I would love to see you down there this July. You can find more information over at www.photoshopworld.com.

If you subscribe to the Perceptive Photographer up on in iTunes, I would love to hear some feedback or have you take a few minutes for you to do a quick review up on iTunes it can help others learn about the show.

In this Episode

I have been updating the images in my digital collection. Going back in time and updating the file names, file organization and metadata. As I have been updating all the metadata fields it got me thinking about all that metadata and how we can use it to sort, search and learn about my work. As I was making the metadata consistent and clean, it occurred to me that it would nice to have some metadata fields that could be used for our visual literacy and language in our work, Sure, some of that data could be contained in keywords, collections or comments, but I think those fields already have a purpose and clouding them with a hack-a-round isn’t the best idea.

I also spent some time over the past few weeks rethinking about how to use some of the current metadata fields to create more data about how my photographs work and resonate with me from changing what 0-5 stars means or how to use the color fields, there seemed to be some interesting options for moving a step closer to having more meaningful metatdata.

Photoshop World 2016

I an also so excited to be an instructor at Photoshop World 2016 this summer in Las Vegas. I am teaching four classes and I would love to see you down there this July. You can find more information over at www.photoshopworld.com.

If you subscribe to the Perceptive Photographer up on in iTunes, I would love to hear some feedback or have you take a few minutes for you to do a quick review up on iTunes it can help others learn about the show.

Twitter

Google+

LinkedIn

Facebook

In this Episode

 

In part 2 of our podcast on Susan Sontag On Photography we take a look at some of the other key themes in the text. While each essay focuses on a central theme, many of her core concepts and principles are dominate across the entire text. In this podcast, I focus on a few of the key concepts that I think most photographers could pull out of the text and find useful in understanding their work. In particular we focus on the following concepts:

Everything in the world can be the subject of a photograph, but just because you point a camera at it doesn't make it interesting.

Photographs are fragments at best. They represent framing fragments, time fragments and contextual fragments. In many ways they become like quotes in a book. In the context and understanding of the text, they make sense, but when remove from their context and source they can often times take on a new meaning.

Photography is based in surrealism and defends this position with three key tenants:

Photographs are duplicates of the world.

Although duplicates of the world, they are easily enhanced (manipulated) by the photographer to change meaning.

Intention is not present in the work and that the relationship between the photographer and object is more co-operative in nature and mediated in dialog by a machine.

Photography is lacking in a cohesive structure and language to understand photographs. This, I believe, is because photography has so many sub-groups that it is difficult to use a single cohesive model to understand all photography. Rather, we should start to look at photography as defined and understood by it's sub-groups.

Photoshop World 2016

I an also so excited to be an instructor at Photoshop World 2016 this summer in Las Vegas. I am teaching four classes and I would love to see you down there this July. You can find more information over at www.photoshopworld.com.

If you subscribe to the Perceptive Photographer up on in iTunes, I would love to hear some feedback or have you take a few minutes for you to do a quick review up on iTunes it can help others learn about the show.

In this Episode

 

In part 2 of our podcast on Susan Sontag On Photography we take a look at some of the other key themes in the text. While each essay focuses on a central theme, many of her core concepts and principles are dominate across the entire text. In this podcast, I focus on a few of the key concepts that I think most photographers could pull out of the text and find useful in understanding their work. In particular we focus on the following concepts:

* Everything in the world can be the subject of a photograph, but just because you point a camera at it doesn’t make it interesting.

* Photographs are fragments at best. They represent framing fragments, time fragments and contextual fragments. In many ways they become like quotes in a book. In the context and understanding of the text, they make sense, but when remove from their context and source they can often times take on a new meaning.

* Photography is based in surrealism and defends this position with three key tenants:

* Photographs are duplicates of the world.

* Although duplicates of the world, they are easily enhanced (manipulated) by the photographer to change meaning.

* Intention is not present in the work and that the relationship between the photographer and object is more co-operative in nature and mediated in dialog by a machine.

* Photography is lacking in a cohesive structure and language to understand photographs. This, I believe, is because photography has so many sub-groups that it is difficult to use a single cohesive model to understand all photography. Rather, we should start to look at photography as defined and understood by it’s sub-groups.

Photoshop World 2016

I an also so excited to be an instructor at Photoshop World 2016 this summer in Las Vegas. I am teaching four classes and I would love to see you down there this July. You can find more information over at www.photoshopworld.com.

If you subscribe to the Perceptive Photographer up on in iTunes, I would love to hear some feedback or have you take a few minutes for you to do a quick review up on iTunes it can help others learn about the show.

Twitter

Google+

In this Episode

 

In 1977, Susan Sontag release a collection of essay written between 1973 and 1977 in a book called On Photography. The book is a collection of those essays in which Sontag examines the role of photography, photographs and photographers impacts on society and art. Written more as philosophical thoughts than academic in its approach, Sontag is able to provide some real interesting insights, observations and arguments around the value and nature of photography. In this week's podcast, I talk about some of my key observations from the the first essay in the book titled In Plato's Cave. 

A very dense and insightful essay, I found some truths in the essay and some points of disagreement. As with all good critics of photography, this essay gave me a lot to think about. Here is a short list of my take aways.

A photographs truth lies in our own understanding of the image, and it is our understanding that makes it interesting.

Photography is a no longer an art form, but rather art created by the masses. It is in this mass art that photography can loose its luster. I would contend that this mass art notion is what separates photographer from the masses. The photographer is concerned with aspects of photography great than just the capture of the image. She also concludes that because photography is so easily created that people are spending more time worried about "the photograph" rather than focusing on the moments, events and places we exist.

Photography's own language is predatory in nature. We shoot, nature, steal our photos.

There are five key reasons photograph fail in her mind.

They are bound by time and space.

Open to interpretation

Only show the world as real if you accept it as real, but knowledge comes from not accepting the world as it is.

Photographs are highly dependent on sentimentality.

Photographs make the world more available to people than it really is. Leaning towards social justice issues.

Photoshop World 2016

I an also so excited to be an instructor at Photoshop World 2016 this summer in Las Vegas. I am teaching four classes and I would love to see you down there this July. You can find more information over at www.photoshopworld.com.

If you subscribe to the Perceptive Photographer up on in iTunes, I would love to hear some feedback or have you take a few minutes for you to do a quick review up on iTunes it can help others learn about the show.

In this Episode

 

In 1977, Susan Sontag release a collection of essay written between 1973 and 1977 in a book called On Photography. The book is a collection of those essays in which Sontag examines the role of photography, photographs and photographers impacts on society and art. Written more as philosophical thoughts than academic in its approach, Sontag is able to provide some real interesting insights, observations and arguments around the value and nature of photography. In this week’s podcast, I talk about some of my key observations from the the first essay in the book titled In Plato’s Cave. 

A very dense and insightful essay, I found some truths in the essay and some points of disagreement. As with all good critics of photography, this essay gave me a lot to think about. Here is a short list of my take aways.

* A photographs truth lies in our own understanding of the image, and it is our understanding that makes it interesting.

* Photography is a no longer an art form, but rather art created by the masses. It is in this mass art that photography can loose its luster. I would contend that this mass art notion is what separates photographer from the masses. The photographer is concerned with aspects of photography great than just the capture of the image. She also concludes that because photography is so easily created that people are spending more time worried about “the photograph” rather than focusing on the moments, events and places we exist.

* Photography’s own language is predatory in nature. We shoot, nature, steal our photos.

* There are five key reasons photograph fail in her mind.

* They are bound by time and space.

* Open to interpretation

* Only show the world as real if you accept it as real, but knowledge comes from not accepting the world as it is.

* Photographs are highly dependent on sentimentality.

* Photographs make the world more available to people than it really is. Leaning towards social justice issues.

Photoshop World 2016

I an also so excited to be an instructor at Photoshop World 2016 this summer in Las Vegas. I am teaching four classes and I would love to see you down there this July. You can find more information over at www.photoshopworld.com.

If you subscribe to the Perceptive Photographer up on in iTunes, I would love to hear some feedback or have you take a few minutes for you to do a quick review up on iTunes it can help others learn about the show.

Twitter

Google+

In this Episode

As March Madness takes hold, I got to thinking about our faction with David and Goliath. We seem to love when an underdog rises above expectations and can advance in the tourney. I think creativity in a lot of ways is sort of like David vs Goliath, but the Goliath is leading a life outside of creativity doing what is expected vs the life that "everyone" talks about living which would be the David.

As i made the transition to full-time photography, I kept hearing from my friends and colleagues that they wondered what it was like to give everything up to become an artist. In my world, I didn't give anything up, but rather was able to find a balance of what really mattered and being present in the moment. As I got to relating the NCAA's to those conversions, it occurred to me that we like to think about how great it would be to go be that "starving artist" who is leaving the dream, but how much we prefer to be that number 1 or 2 seed. It is nice to know that we have put in all the work and that we are likely to come out on top. However, as we learn every year at this time. Just because you play in a certain conference, have a certain record or show huge talent, at the end of the day the team that shows up and embraces the moment and believes in what they are doing can be that underdog that breaks everyone's brackets.

I encourage you to find a way to be your own David in your creativity and break out of what you should do, how you should play and try to enjoy the creative energy you have today.

Photoshop World 2016

I an also so excited to be an instructor at Photoshop World 2016 this summer in Las Vegas. I am teaching four classes and I would love to see you down there this July. You can find more information over at www.photoshopworld.com.

If you subscribe to the Perceptive Photographer up on in iTunes, I would love to hear some feedback or have you take a few minutes for you to do a quick review up on iTunes it can help others learn about the show.