The Perceptive Photographer

One of the greatest things about working in modern photography is the flexibility that all our tools allow. One of those areas of flexibility is in shooting in back and white or color. When shooting film, you had to make a decision about shooting in black and white or color when you loaded the camera. This limitation forced the photographer to think about what and how they were going to create their images.

Working in Black and White or Color

All photography is about light and shadow. These are the key core components of working with an image. However when we work in black and white, we are also concerned about tones of gray from black to white. When we work in color, we are concerned about color (hue, tint, saturation). While you can argue that black and white photography is just achromatic color, the thinking that goes into how a photograph works when it black and white or color is different. The color information can help us create compositions that use the color information to build or remove relationships. The tonal relationships of black and white also build and establish relationships and help us understand the image, but it is on some level an abstraction from our color world.

History of Photography

Color photography has been around almost since the beginning of photography. With Niépce first image around 1826 photography was born, and color photography was just a few decades later. Edmond Becquerel created the first color photographs in 1848. Although these images only survived for a few hours or days, they were still the first images to record color. As photography grew, we saw the introduction of the first mass market camera by Kodak in 1901 and just seven years later, we see Autochrome introduced as the first color film. In 1935, Kodak introduced Kodachrome forever changing the way we record and see color photography. Just a few years later, Kodak introduces ways to print slides that lead to the release of kodacolor negative film. While color photography has been around almost since the beginning, it wasn't as widely used and in the fine art space wasn't accepted as a viable art medium until the late 1960s and early 1970s.

In the Podcast

In this podcast, I talk a little about how intertwined color and black and white photography have been since the birth of photography. I also focus on how you should think about color and black and white as tools to help you better tell a story rather than as a way to fix something in post-production because of a failure behind the camera. Learning to see in color and black and white are skills that should be developed with purpose and meaning rather than as reactions to trying to "fix" the image. For homework, I encourage you to look at some masterful black and white and color work and then challenge yourself to send a day photographing only in black and white and day only in color. No post process cheating, just working behind the camera.

When working on a project one of the most important aspects of that work is the editing and sequencing work. To tell a great story, you need to make sure that the images you select for the project are not just great images but also tell the best story possible.

In this podcast, we take a look at the key concepts around editing and sequencing work. Focused on more of the photo essay verse a photo story, we talk about how important it is to have strong images. Focusing on composition, technique, meaning, intention and a ruthless eye for editing, you can select the best images for your project. Working with a really strong base of images, you can then start the sequencing project.

Sequencing Photos

When working with essays, the sequence is just as important as the images contained in the project. There are number of ways that you can sequence work:

by color

by shape and form

compositional elements

meaning

light and shadow

color

feeling

emotion

time

With so many options and images how do you even get started. I like to start with creating piles of images that share a common thread. From those piles, I pull the strongest images. The rest of the images go into piles for reference and use later. I then start with one of images and find a second image that pair well with the first. It is feeling or gut reaction at first. It just seems that these images are stronger when they are together. At that point, I can start to figure out what about the images works well together. From that I just keep adding and subtracting images until the essay is complete.

It is also important to focus on what your project is since editing for a book, video, magazine, and gallery wall are all different experiences. In some cases, you might have both with one being a subset of the other. This can result in you having two edits of the same work.

What is the most important camera setting for a good photograph? I always respond to this question with my classic f/8 at 1/125th of a second. It is what all my shots are done with. I even hold a patent on that setting. My feeble attempt at humor does have me thinking about what are the good "settings" to use for successful images.

I know that a lot of time we might look to inspiration as a key setting to getting good photographs, but the reality is that inspiration is just about showing up every day and putting in the work. Is is about the work. The day-to-day grind to make great images. I don't think that is the answer photographers need to create great work. I do think they need to be willing to explore and be crazy creative, but that only goes so far. So where does that leave us.

For me, the three key areas (settings) that I think every photographer should focus on to get successful work:

Learn to see what matters to you. Find what you focus on most in images. Is it color, tone, patterns, gestures. Then make your work focus on improving that. Follow your strengths.

Study other photographers. You need to know the history of photography and what has worked and not worked. Moving beyond just social media to understand what images have made an impact on our world and why. Looking to galleries, museums and collections such as Magnum Photos can tell you a lot about our world and how your images fit into that story. I also think it is important to look at what has not been told in those collections for various reasons (race, religion, politics). You can learn so much about a society by looking at the voices that are left out.

Editing/Sequencing is perhaps the most important setting. Learning to edit behind the camera and selecting the best image afterwards is key to creating the best work possible.

I often times get asked about how to price a photograph for sale. When looking at basic models for pricing, you only need to know a few things. The cost of your expenses plus your required profit equals the price. If you want to break it down even further. You should look at the cost of your materials (paper, frames, ink, film,  matte board, et)+Labor (what you make an hour..which is not much if you are an artist)+Expenses (rent, electricity, cameras, printers, memory cards, etc)+profit is equal to you wholesale cost. Multiple that cost by 2 and you get the retail cost. Using this basic formula, you can figure out what the price of a photograph should be.

In this podcast, we talk about how in our society we tend to equate price and value. The more expensive the more valuable. However, I would like to challenge that notion. In the second half of the podcast, we talk about what makes something valuable. What is it in your own work that you find valuable? Is it the experience, the work, the craftsmanship. Is sharing the work on social media for free more valuable than the money. As an artist, you have to decide those answers for yourself. In the end, what we really want to create is work that we think is valuable. To do that we should figure out what value means to us. Particularly if it is something more than dollars and cents.

A recent trip to an antique store where I purchased a vintage box of Crayola crayons from the 1910-120s time frame got me thinking a lot about how we children we are rarely creatively blocked. We can pick up pretty much anything and make a fun game out of it. We draw, paint and build with our imaginations in ways that disappear as we age.

There are a lot of methods for getting your creative juices flowing. Behind the camera are the classics like shoot with a new lens, try black and white verse color or shooting horizontal vs vertical. In my own experience there are a few things that are little more fun than just trying something new behind the camera. From playing games such as SET to MST3K to reading, there are some many fun things you are do that can jump start your creative process; and in this podcast we talk about how some of those ideas that work for me might help you.

We also give a shout out to Chris Orwig's new book The Creative Fight

In part 2 of this series on photographic books, I recommend a number of books that you should consider for the photography section of your bookshelf. With hundreds and thousands of books available, it is often time overwhelming knowing where to start. Even as I started pulling a list of books together, I was paralyzed by the number and direction to take the recommendations. I think it is easier when you are trying to recommend books for a specific genera of work. It is easy to recommend Winogrand, Frank, Cartier-Bresson, Davidson, Maisel and Erwitt for street and Avedon for fashion and so on, but what do you do for the general photography bookshelf.

In this podcast, I attempted to pull together a collection of class books, projects or photographers that I think should be on your bookshelf. In no way is this list comprehensive. My own list leaves out many of my own favorite books, but in the interest of time, I narrowed the list down. These books are a mix of amazing projects and collections. Some of the books are from early in an artist career while other come later. In each case, I tired to find a book that really stood out as an interesting body of work. I also attempted to select books that were not retrospectives of a photographer's life. While those are amazing books, there is so much to learn from looking at how a single project or books is created verse a whole life or decades of work--of course there are a few exceptions.

In this podcast, I mention work by

Nicolas Nixon

Diane Arbus

William Eggleston

André Kertész

Michael Kenna

Bruce Davidson

Syliva Plachy

Andreas Gursky

Gary Winogrand

Elliot Erwitt

Robert Adams

Stephen Shore

Cindy Sherman

Ansel Adams

John Szarkowski

Keith Carter

Man Ray

Richard Avedon

There are so many great books out about photography, and I love to read and collect books. If given the choice between new camera gear or new photography books, I always choose books. In this podcast, I have gone into the bookcase and pulled out some books that I think every photographer should own.

The books cover a wide range of styles, genera, and topics. Rather than focusing in on just one type of photography, I tried to pull from a variety of sources. Most of the books are a combination of text and photos with the writing being done by the photographer. There are also a few classic essays on photography that while more academic in their writing are worth reading if you are a student of photography.

With so many books to choose from, I broke this list into two shows. Part II of the work will be out next week.

Here is a list of the books mentioned in the show this week, with links to purchase at Amazon (affiliate link). Of course, you can also get your local bookstore to order them for you as well.

 Inner Game of Outdoor Photography by Galen Rowell

 Magnum Contact Sheets

 The Americans by Robert Frank

 Road to Seeing by Dan Winters

 Gregory Heisler by 50 Portraits

 The Mind's Eye by Henri Cartier-Bresson

The Decisive Moment by Henri Cartier-Bresson

Ping Pong Conversations: Alec Soth with Francesco Zanot

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by Walker Evans & James Agee

 On Photography by Susan Sontag

 Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography by Roland Barthes

Perception and Imaging: Photography--A Way of Seeing 3rd Edition by Richard D. Zakia

I recently saw an article about how the iPhone 6s was a better video camera than a Nikon D750. The headline was something along the lines of iPhone 6s outperforms $3, ooo DSLR. The gist of the articles was that in daylight and under certain conditions the iPhone was better technology than a DSLR for video production. This shouldn't come as a huge surprise given the power of the iPhone, the headline-grabbing nature of the media and that the whole idea misses the bigger point.

Technology doesn't ultimately make the story or create the image. It is a tool in the tool belt. Sure, as my dad reminded so many years ago when I was using a screwdriver for a hammer that the right tool for the right job makes a huge difference, it is not the only difference. As I sat there reading, I got to thinking about what got me to click on the headline. What was it about those 5-7 words that got me to move to action.

Headlines are titles or captions to our images. They are quick phrases that are meant to be informative, insightful and provide context to our work. In this podcast, I talk about how finding the right headlines can make a huge difference in your understanding of your work. I also look at how cliches and corny headlines can say a lot about the type of work you are creating. Just like in our photographs, we should be striving for meaningful, lasting work rather than fast-food cliches.

There is so many great things happening in photography today. The combination of technologies, history and experimentation has the art form moving in so many new and exciting directions. No matter how much technology or education is out there, it is hard to underestimate the value of experience. Sure accidents will happen, but for the most part just handing someone a camera doesn't mean that they create amazing work. Sometimes life is amazing and a camera is put there to record it, but other times experience tells us how to observe and understand the world in front of us.  Experience gives us a stronger foundation to stand on and helps us understand how to avoid little mistakes that might have huge impacts on our work. Experience also tells us what to focus on not just in the frame but in the judgement of our own work against others and in the living day-to-day as an artist.

I was working in the darkroom recently and came across an issue that I hadn't seen before. It is not uncommon to find yourself in situations where you might find yourself in a void of knowledge. As I experimented over and over trying to figure out what happened, I realized that one of the most important traits of an artist is curiosity.

I have always believed that there is a strong relationship between art and science. At their core, they are both about curiosity. Each disciple goes about it in really different ways, but they both strive to find answers to unanswered questions and make sense of the world. I think that finding something that you want to know more about and exploring that in your photography is a great way to find new projects and understand your craft. If you want to know what a strip light does when working with a model. Don't go to YouTube to find out. Put your camera in-front of a model with a strip light. Want to know what something looks like way overexposed. Overexpose it.

I have found in my coaching that too many times people are unwilling to go down the rabbit hole and see what happens. Even if the results lead to nowhere, there is so much to be learned by flexing and working out those creative curiosity muscles.