How To Stimulate Your Photography by Learning From the Best

A Post By: Kevin Landwer-Johan

Henri Cartier-Bresson said that “Your first ten thousand photographs are your worst.” Every successful creative spends boundless time, thought, and concentrated effort pursuing their passion. You can accelerate your photography education by learning from accomplished artists. One way to stimulate your photography is by reading quotes from not only photographers but creative people who express themselves in any medium.

I find stimulus from musicians, painter, authors, sculptors, and others. By reading the words of outstanding visionary artists, you can draw from the depth of their experience.

© Kevin Landwer-Johan

Whether you are coming to grips with camera settings when you are just starting out or seeking deeper motivation, if you’re already confident with your camera, you will do well to learn from those with more experience than yourself or your peers.

Be Part of an Ongoing Conversation

“I’m in the middle of a long conversation with my audience, it’ll be a lifelong journey for both of us by the time we’re done.” Bruce Springsteen (rock musician, author)

© Kevin Landwer-Johan

Photography is a communicative tool. Your style choice may be fine art or street photography. You may be interested in creating documentary photographs. Whatever your choice of style and subject, approach it as an ongoing conversation. Not just talking, but also listening.

Your best photographs express your feelings. They convey something of who you are. The best conversations are two-sided. Participate with your audience and listen to their feedback.

If you’ve never seen Springsteen perform live, find some of his concert clips on Youtube. He is a master in audience participation. He draws energy from his audience and is driven to return that energy in his performances.

© Kevin Landwer-Johan

It’s easier for rock stars to do this than photographers. Find people to give you feedback. Become part of other photographers creative conversations by sharing your feelings about their photography. You will grow together.

Work With the Raw Materials

“What makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time.” John Berger (art critic, novelist, painter and poet)

Having a good grasp of the basics for anything you want to learn is the start of your journey towards success. Photography is all about light and time. Understanding the role that these two raw materials play in photography will make your journey more exciting and absorbing.

Throughout history, some of the greatest minds have devoted themselves to the understanding of time and light. As a photographer, you need to constantly consider these two raw materials of your craft. Not in such a deep way as to invent time travel, but at least in how they relate to the story you are telling with your photographs.

© Kevin Landwer-Johan

“Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. However, above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography.” George Eastman (founder of Kodak)

Practice Always

“Photography is the simplest thing in the world, but it is incredibly complicated to make it work.” Martin Parr (photographer)

Commitment over time makes a huge impact on your achievements. Photography is actually quite simple, but to make a truly great photograph in our lifetime will probably elude most of us. This should not stop you putting in the effort because there is always an element of luck. Unless you are practiced and prepared, when luck happens, you may miss it.

© Kevin Landwer-Johan

Whatever you like to photograph, work on it. Not once a month, or even once a week. Make a point of taking at least one photo a day and learning, or improving one technique. Focus on a few topics you love and make projects of them. You will see your progress more readily if you do.

On Portraiture

Be more than a person with a camera when you are making portraits. Engage in dialogue. This way your subject becomes an integral part of your photography conversation, and not just a ‘sitter’ for a head shot.

“Who sees the human face correctly: The photographer, the mirror, or the painter?” Pablo Picasso (painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet, and playwright)

© Kevin Landwer-Johan

You could argue that some of the faces Picasso painted are barely recognizable as people. He expressed himself like no other person before him. Study him and read his quotes. You can learn from a master who was one of the most influential creatives in history.

Portraiture is probably the most common photography subject (even if you exclude selfies.) There is nothing complicated about choosing to photograph a person, but the complexities in making an outstanding portrait are many.

“A portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it.” Edward Steichen (photographer, painter, and art gallery and museum curator)

On Street Photography

“It’s easy to penetrate someone’s privacy. People are glad you’re there to see them, cos no one’s paying attention.” Bruce Davidson (photographer)

© Kevin Landwer-Johan

Our perceptions of street photography are as varied as the number of photographers who engage in it. Bringing yourself to step out into the world, record it as you see it, and then share the photographic conversations you have, is challenging for many people.

Jumping into the shoes of experience will ease this pain. Guys like Bruce Davidson have been approaching strangers ‘cold’ for decades. Use the voice of this experience to guide you and motivate you.

Street photography is popular. There are a lot of new photographers producing some wonderful work. These pictures can do a certain amount to inspire, but there is no depth of experience to really lean on.

© Kevin Landwer-Johan

On Documentary Photography

“I’m not an artist. An artist makes an object. Me, it’s not an object, I work in history, I’m a storyteller.” Sebastiao Salgado (photographer)

Our photographs can change the world. Photographs can change us. As a young guy with a camera, seeing photos and reading articles with quotes from the greats like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Sebastiao Salgado, Dorothea Lange, and other accomplished documentary photographers inspired me. These are the things that drove me.

© Kevin Landwer-Johan

Before the internet, we shared photos differently, being mostly restricted to printed pictures. Inspiration happened in the pages of books and magazines and sometimes on art gallery walls. Carefully curated bodies of work published in Time, Life, and National Geographic, accompanied by well-written, carefully edited articles, provided a richness difficult to find on Instagram or other social media platforms.

If you feel strongly about something, photograph it. Make it an ongoing project. Let it span months or even years. But do not rely on only yourself. Look to those who have gone before you. Listen to their music, read their books, and study their photographs. Bring them into your creative conversation so that you stimulate your photography.

“Photography takes an instant of our time, altering life by holding it still.” Dorothea Lange (photographer)

10 Ways to Take Stunning Portraits

A Post By: Darren Rowse

How do you take Portraits that have the ‘Wow’ factor?

Today and tomorrow I want to talk about taking Portraits that are a little out of the box. You see it’s all very well and good to have a portrait that follows all the rules – but it hit me as I was surfing on Flickr today that often the most striking portraits are those that break all the rules.

I want to look at some ways to break out of the mold and take striking portraits by breaking (or at least bending) the rules and adding a little randomness into your portrait photography. I’ll share ten of these tips today and a further ten tomorrow (update: you can see the 2nd part here).

1. Alter Your Perspective

Most portraits are taken with the camera at (or around) the eye level of the subject. While this is good common sense – completely changing the angle that you shoot from can give your portrait a real WOW factor.

Photo by striatic

Get up high and shoot down on your subject or get as close to the ground as you can and shoot up. Either way you’ll be seeing your subject from an angle that is bound to create interest.

Photo by TeeRish

2. Play with Eye Contact

It is amazing how much the direction of your subject’s eyes can impact an image. Most portraits have the subject looking down the lens – something that can create a real sense of connection between a subject and those viewing the image. But there are a couple of other things to try:

A. Looking off camera – have your subject focus their attention on something unseen and outside the field of view of your camera. This can create a feeling of candidness and also create a little intrigue and interest as the viewer of the shot wonders what they are looking at. This intrigue is particularly drawn about when the subject is showing some kind of emotion (ie ‘what’s making them laugh?’ or ‘what is making them look surprised?’). Just be aware that when you have a subject looking out of frame that you can also draw the eye of the viewer of the shot to the edge of the image also – taking them away from the point of interest in your shot – the subject.

Photo by monicutza80

B. Looking within the frame – alternatively you could have your subject looking at something (or someone) within the frame. A child looking at a ball, a woman looking at her new baby, a man looking hungrily at a big plate of pasta…. When you give your subject something to look at that is inside the frame you create a second point of interest and a relationship between it and your primary subject. It also helps create ‘story’ within the image.

Photo by paulbence

3. Break the Rules of Composition

There are a lot of ‘rules’ out there when it comes to composition and I’ve always had a love hate relationship with them. My theory is that while they are useful to know and employ that they are also useful to know so you can purposely break them – as this can lead to eye catching results.

The Rule of Thirds is one that can be effective to break – placing your subject either dead centre can sometimes create a powerful image – or even creative placement with your subject right on the edge of a shot can sometimes create interesting images.

Photo by reportergimmiâ„¢

Another ‘rule’ that we often talk about in portrait photography is to give your subject room to look into. This can work really well – but again, sometimes rules are made to be broken.

Photo by Bukutgirl

4. Experiment with Lighting

Another element of randomness that you can introduce to your portraits is the way that you light them. There are almost unlimited possibilities when it comes to using light in portraits.

Side-lighting can create mood, backlighting and silhouetting your subject to hide their features can be powerful.

Photo by Bukutgirl

Using techniques like slow synch flash can create an impressive wow factor.

Photo by diskomethod

5. Move Your Subject Out of their Comfort Zone

I was chatting with a photographer recently who told me about a corporate portrait shoot that he had done with a business man at his home. They’d taken a lot of head and shoulder shots, shots at his desk, shots in front of framed degrees and other ‘corporate’ type images. They had all turned out fairly standard – but there was nothing that really stood out from the crowd.

The photographer and the subject agreed that there were plenty of useable shots but they wanted to create something ‘special’ and out of the box. The photographer suggested they try some ‘jumping’ shots. The subject was a little hesitant at first but stepped out into the uncomfortable zone and dressed in his suit and tie started jumping!

The shots were amazing, surprising and quite funny. The shoot culminated with the subject jumping in his pool for one last image!

While this might all sound a little ‘silly’ the shots ended up being featured in a magazine spread about the subject. It was the series of out of the box images that convinced the magazine he was someone that they’d want to feature.

Image by TeeRish

6. Shoot Candidly

Sometimes posed shots can look somewhat…. posed. Some people don’t look good in a posed environment and so switching to a candid type approach can work.

Photograph your subject at work, with family or doing something that they love. This will put them more at ease and you can end up getting some special shots with them reacting naturally to the situation that they are in. You might even want to grab a longer zoom lens to take you out of their immediate zone and get really paparazzi with them.

I find that this can particularly work when photographing children.

Photo by phitar

7. Introduce a Prop

Add a prop of some kind into your shots and you create another point of interest that can enhance your shot.

Yes you might run the risk of taking too much focus away from your main subject but you could also really add a sense of story and place to the image that takes it in a new direction and gives the person you’re photographing an extra layer of depth that they wouldn’t have had without the prop.

Photo by Mrs. Maze

8. Focus Upon One Body Part – Get Close Up

Get a lens with a long focal length attached to your camera – or get right in close so that you can just photograph a part of your subject. Photographing a person’s hands, eyes, mouth or even just their lower body… can leave a lot to the imagination of the viewer of an image.

Sometimes it’s what is left out of an image that says more than what is included.

Photo by Bukutgirl

9. Obscure Part of your Subject

A variation on the idea of zooming in on one part of the body is to obscure parts of your portrait subject’s face or body. You can do this with clothing, objects, their hands or just by framing part of them out of the image.

Doing this means that you leave a little to the imagination of the image’s viewer but also focus their attention on parts of your subject that you want them to be focused upon.

Photo by BigBlonde

10. Take a Series of Shots

Switch your camera into ‘burst’ or ‘continuous shooting’ mode and fire off more than one shot at a time.

In doing this you create a series of images that could be presented together instead of just one static image.

This technique can work very well when you’re photographing children – or really any active subject that is changing their position or pose in quick succession.

Image by diyosa

10 More ways to Take Great Portraits – Continued Tomorrow

Tomorrow I will complete this mini-series of posts on portrait photography with 10 more techniques like the ones above. Make sure you’re subscribed to Digital Photography School to ensure you get the second half!

Update: You can read the 2nd half of this series at 10 More Tips for Stunning Portrait Photography. Also check out What the Mona Lisa Can Teach You About Taking Great Portraits for a portraits tutorial with a difference.

Also – don’t forget the portrait section of our forum – an ideal place to discuss portrait photography and show off some of your work.