How To Take More Creative Photos With ANY Camera - Part 1

1. How Take Take More Creative Photos With Any Camera Intro: Hey, I'm Rob Goldman and I would like to welcome you to how to take more creative photos with any camera. Part one, I designed this course in response to countless students asking me, how do I make my photographs more creative? Or why are your photographs so much more creative than mine? So I decided to answer that question. And I took the broader concept of creative photography and I broken down into 19 simple concepts, 19 lessons, each accompanied by an assignment. And we walk through the process of creativity one step at a time together. Whether you're using a cell phone or a DSLR or mirrorless camera or shooting film. We're not going to be talking about technique at all. We're going to put technique to the side. No mention of f-stops and shutter speeds and white balance. We're going to focus completely on the creative process. Taking it one step at a time, layer by layer by layer, adding more interests, more intrigued, more meaning to your photography. So this is a chance for you to really have some fun to let go of ideas of what you think your photograph should be or how you should shoot. And really just enjoy the process. And I promise you by the end of this program, you will absolutely be making more interesting, more personal, more creative photographs. 2. Lesson 1 - Big Time: Welcome to lesson number one, big time. The lesson is titled big time because we're playing with scale. We're playing with scale, we're playing with proportions, we're playing with perspective. Our IC, with perspective and, um, but our brain really correct for that perspective. So we're not walking around consciously thinking, Oh my gosh, that object in the foreground is so big and then object and the background is so small. And yet you'll notice that if I bring my hand closer to the lens, it does get bigger, and as it comes back, it does get smaller. So although we have two buffalo that are the same size in life, the camera is showing the difference in that scale. Simply because one Buffalo is significantly closer to the camera than the other. It's this interplay of scale, this interplay of sizes that makes the photograph interesting. It doesn't necessarily play tricks on your eye as the viewer, but it, It's just an exaggeration of reality in it moves you right away from making photographs that are records of objects, which is incredibly boring, to photographs where you're creating something that is taking advantage of the optics that are built into your lens. So start thinking about this idea of foreground-background, foreground background, of exaggerating that scale. And as a result, you'll notice that your eye travels from the buffalo in the foreground to the buffalo in the background. And that's sort of a tried and true part of my teaching is to create an opportunity for your viewer to enter the photograph. And this is a sure-fire way to do that. So think about scale. Think about perspective. Think about proportion. Think about this idea of playing with those things to make your photographs more interesting. And that does it for less than one. 3. Assignment 1 - Big Time : Alright, now your assignment for lesson one big time is, as we spoke about to create a photograph that utilizes this idea of a foreground background relationship to toy with the idea of scale. So what I invite you to do is to set something up. Could be a still-life, could be a portrait, but set something up where you have actual control of the placement of your objects in the frame. If you're going to photograph to people as an example, bring somebody we'll close to the camera and somebody else further away from the camera. And you'll quickly discover that you're playing with this, with this interplay of scale and proportion and perspective and making more interesting photographs like that. So good luck. Try once, tried twice, tried ten times. Play with with stationary objects, play with people. You can, you can even do it with found objects. You may find that as you're walking around, you see Ola, there's one tree that I can put in the foreground, and there's another tree that I'm going to put in the background. And just initially play around with the technique. And once you get the idea down, then apply some creativity. And let's see what you come up with. Post it on the pH, and let's see what you can do. 4. Lesson 2 - A Splash of Colour: Welcome to lesson number two, a splash of color. You'll notice when you look at a photograph of the car, that's your eye immediately goes to the car. It is a bright colorful object in the middle of a relatively neutral field. Our eyes and our brains are programmed to see the most colorful object in a field, in a photograph in life first, that's where I goes. So be aware of that. And when you're creating your photographs, whether you're coming upon an image, when you're coming upon I'm a situation the way that I have with this car, or if you're just decided that you want to create a photograph for the sake of creating an interesting photograph. In either case, place that object of color in a way that is going to be significant and that is going to complement your photograph knowing that your viewers eye is going to go right there, right to that colorful object. So think about that as you, as you go on in your picture taking, think about the idea that drawing your viewer into the photograph quickly and keeping them there is one of the goals of making your photographs more interesting and certainly more memorable. If you, if, if the photograph is sort of like color here, color there, and there's not much of a sense of a particular object or a particular center of interest. Then you wind up in sort of a pinball machine of a viewing. And your, your, your viewer just doesn't know what to look at first. When you do something like this, where you isolate your subject based on its color, based on this idea of a splash of color in a neutral field. You'll find that right away. You're making more interesting photographs. 5. Assignment 2 - A Splash of Colour: Your assignment for week two, I splash of color is to create a photograph whose success is based on the idea that your subject is isolated and is drawing attention based on the idea that it is the most colorful object in the frame. So I invite you to either go out in search of an image that you notice. There's, there's the red stop sign. It's drawing attention. Or there's the yellow car or and or setting up a photograph where where you may say, Hey, you know what? I'm going to photograph my daughter and I'm going to put her in a bright blue dress against, against the White House or something along those lines. It could be a still-life, it could be a portrait. It could be something that you find out in nature. But either way, whichever way you go about it, Just the idea is single object, bright color, neutral field. You'll find the instantly, once again, you're making better photographs. 6. Lesson 3 - All In The Family: Welcome to lesson three, All in the Family. This lesson is really all about creating photographs that goes significantly beyond the classic snapshot of really invented by Kodak in the 1950s. The Kodak moment, as it was called. Kodak actually really invented the idea of a snapshot in post-war America, where for the first time subjects were expected to look at the camera and smile. It was a formula. It was a prescribed formula really that for hundreds of years, 100 years of photography that came before it, this idea of never existed. And for better and for worse, the idea of the Kodak Moment got cemented into our culture. And the unfortunate thing is that it's a dead end for making more emotional, more interesting, more evocative photographs of people, especially our friends and family members whom we love. So let's think more about shifting over from this idealized version of a picture of somebody that we're photographing and more into a sort of a capturing of an emotional moment. Which means the first off, we have to actually show up. We have to be there, we have to feel that emotion, we have to notice our experience. Once were aware of the experience. Then we can go on to step two, which is really to compose an image that that really in trances our viewer. And from a design perspective brings them into the photograph and from an emotional perspective keeps them engaged in that photograph. So if we want to think of this in those two steps, it's step one. You as a photographer become present. Move away from an expectation of what you think that photograph should be. Move away from the idea of man handling your subject of telling them, stand here, do this, do this, do that, and instead, pay attention. One of them best ways that you can move into step two, which is designed is to start observing nature, start noticing the miracle of the way that everything in nature is composed. I find it is the best teacher for understanding the nature of what balance and design really all about from the tiniest, tiniest subatomic particle to the grandness landscape. Two images that are taken from space of the Earth. Things in nature are just beautifully balanced. They're not necessarily symmetrical. Oh, at times they can be, but nonetheless balanced indeed. So this is a kind of a nurturing of these two different skills. Skill number one, presence, awareness, feeling the emotion, not insisting that things be a certain way, the way that you want them to be. But really looking at how can I really, really be quiet and pay attention? And notice what's arising. Step to design. You've really become president. You aware of what's going on. You're aware of the feelings and the image. But now you have to add part two of photo graphy, the graphic element. And again, fine tune your seeing skills by taking the time and just really observing the pattern in a leaf. Observe a ripple of water, observe a mountain range, observed snow falling. Whatever it takes for you to become more aware of the organic nature of design. You'll be able then to be influenced and inspired by what is going on in the natural world. So put those two things together and I guarantee your pictures of people will be off the charts. 7. Assignment 3 - All In The Family: Your assignment for week three, All in the Family is to go back to these two aspects of what I'm suggesting it takes to bring your photos of family and friends up to the next level. The first one is to show up, end to end, to simply observe and to feel what's going on. So you might want to ask some people in your life, a group of friends or family members, or one-person, if it would be okay for you to just kinda be with them in the capacity of a photographer. You don't necessarily have to do anything other than pay attention. You can also do this when you're in a conversation with somebody. Instead of just hearing what they have to say, really, really watch them, watch them closely. Notice hand gestures. Notice, notice body positions. Notice the light that's falling on them. Notice how they fit into the background. Just in of course, notice how you feel. Most of the time if we're going to be creating photographs of our loved ones, we are looking to portray our love for that person. And that's a really important point when you're thinking about this. It's not only about a record of that subject, it's a record really of your feelings for that subject in the moment. So that's the observing part, part to the graphic part, the design part, the composition part. Go out in nature. Go and pick up a leaf and sit and study and be blown away by the miracle of what the veins of that leaf look like. Or go and sit and contemplate a forest. Notice the incredible repetitive nature of those trees in the hundreds and thousands of trees and millions and billions and trillions of leaves. And how they just miraculously all fit together in one composition. And as you begin to nurture both of those skills, you will notice that your pictures of people are going to improve greatly. 8. Lesson 4 - Back to Basics: Hey, welcome to lesson four, back to basics. We're using this photograph of the Ferris wheel to demonstrate the concept of taking a big idea, a big scene, something that is potentially complicated, and basically eliminating everything from that scene other than the most simple expression of an idea. That idea is expressed through lines, shapes, and spaces. So when we look at the Ferris wheel, of course we know it's a Ferris wheel, but if we just took a picture of a Ferris wheel, it would be incredibly boring. So we're looking to do is to reduce to Destiel. Photography is known as a reductive process with the idea that there's this huge world out there. And we are taking not only a little sliver of the world by deciding what it is that we're going to include in the frame. But then additionally, once we've got that object in the frame, we want to reduce it even further to eliminate any distractions to move away from a photograph that that describes an object by including too much information and really breaking it down into its most basic elements, lines, shapes, and spaces. Again, reducing it, distilling, it's simplifying it back to basics. So as you start looking at the world as a photographer, start really paying attention equally to what, what it is that's in your scene as far as the the objects and the meaning of what you're looking at. But additionally or, or perhaps even more so just looking at what happens when you boil it down, boil it down, boil it down. It's absolute basics of lines, shapes, and spaces. And in thinking in these terms, you'll notice that your photographs just start to become more interesting and more engaging. Don't mistake the idea of basic being easy or simple being easy. This is, this is not the easy way to go. The easy way to go and see an object fall in love with the object. Take a picture of the object and have an incredibly boring record of the object. This is a much more advanced way of thinking and advanced way of seeing. But it's just a practice like anything else. And once you're aware of the difference between photographs of objects that are just records of those objects, and photographs that are interpretations of a scene, of a situation, of a concept. Taking that idea, boil it down into its most basic form. Once again, sorry to be so repetitive lines, shapes, and spaces. That's the way to think. Go for it. Good luck. 9. Assignment 4 - Back to Basics: Your assignment for lesson four is to find a scene. Find a situation where you're coming upon something that has particularly strong personal meaning for you. A place that you love to visit, something that's reminiscent of your childhood, your home. Look at that scene first through the eyes of your own familiar way of looking. And then give yourself an opportunity to just stay there. And then imagine what that would look like if it was boiled down into its most basic expression, into its simplest form, basically into lines, shapes, and spaces. So in the beginning, this can be an unfamiliar, tricky process that you're looking to shift the way that you see from that of a pedestrian to that of a photographer. But this is one of the sure-fire ways to do that. To start thinking in terms of your photograph, in terms of design. And design really boils down to those three ideas of lines, shapes, and spaces. Of course, color is a component. But for this particular exercise, I would ask you to leave color out of the equation and really just focus on form. Focus on your ability to, to really, really simplify what you're looking at down into its most fundamental expression. And you will find that sharing these photographs with people leaves a lot for them to interpret. It's one, it's one of the ways to engage your viewer is not to show them everything, is to show them more of something that is symbolic of the scene, symbolic of the object. And one of the best ways to do that is eliminate the clutter and get back to basics. I'm sure you can do a great job and I look forward to seeing your photos on the Facebook page. 10. Lesson 5 - Alone At Last: As photographers, we want to start to think of our work sometimes at least in terms of themes, in terms of concepts beyond photographs of objects, we want to start thinking more in terms of meaning and even coming into the photograph from an intention perspective of making the photograph in the first place because we're looking to convey that theme. So in this particular case, what we're specifically looking at is the nature of solitude, of kinda combine the solo part of solitude with the quiet 2D part and put those two things together, then we've got this concept of what does it feel like to have this tranquil experience alone? For me? My great sanctuary is the woods. And if I'm looking to find peace for myself, that is the first place instinctive, instinctively that I'm going to wind up is in the middle of the woods. If if it's in this particular case with this photograph, that it's a foggy morning, all the better. So what I want you to start to think about and to notice is, where do you go to find peace when you're by yourself? What does it feel like in that space? And how does the combination of being in that place combined with the feeling of being in that place. How do you take those two things and combine them together in a photograph? It's the nature of solitude, of conveying solitude is that there is a spaciousness in your experience and in your photographs. So simplicity is king here, really. The idea that there's all this space, but that there's, that you're not lost, that you're not threatened. That space actually is the space of peace and quiet, and that's really what you're looking for. So start really noticing as you're, as you're, as you're seeing the world for four, in its, in its truest sense. And as you're seeing television shows, commercials, movies, paintings, other photographs, just notice when and how is it a sense of solitude created in this work? And start to build that into your work and start thinking again in terms of being inspired and coming out of the gate to make a photograph. Not only because you're seeing something that you find really interesting. And not only because you have a concept, but more because you're looking to convey a particular feeling, a particular experience, a particular emotion. And in this case, that is the emotion of solitude. 11. Assignment 5 - Alone At Last: Your assignment for this session is to create a photograph that is based on the intention of creating something that has a sense of solitude. Which by its very nature means that you must put yourself in a place where you're going to experience solitude. It's like double your money for this particular assignment. So think about where you would go. Where, where do you go or where might you go? Is it a, is it a place that is familiar? Is it a place that you've been dying to visit for the last week, month, year, where you just know that once you're there, that you have this exquisite sense of peace. Just simply by thinking about that, that's going to inspire the way that you think about that space and that place. Once you're in that place, allow yourself to actually feel at peace. Allow yourself to feel the tranquility and the spaciousness of that space. Then as a photographer, how are you going to convey that sensibility? How are you going to convey that feeling of spaciousness and quiet tattooed by yourself in that sacred space. It's not something to really ponder as much as it is something to experience. So that's really what this assignment about is certainly ponder where you might go or where you will go and then go there. Absolutely positively do that by yourself and feel the spaciousness. If there's, sometimes for people there's anxiety that comes up in a space like that where now they're now I don't know what to do or now I find myself alone. You know what B with that as well. But then move through it and then use your camera as your tool to really look around and say, where do I point my camera at? What what else do I include in the photograph? What else do I exclude from the photograph so that when all is said and done, I've taken this space and I've taken this emotion, and I've taken this experience, and I have boiled it down into its simplest essence. What I'm left with at the end is sort of a feeling. That's what you're going to do. Do it well. 12. Lesson 6 - And Then There Was Light: Learning to see light as a photographer is a discipline. And of course, without light, we wouldn't have a photograph and with too much light, our photograph is too bright and with them without enough light or photograph is too dark. But beyond thinking in terms of lightness and darkness, just have exposure. We really want to start to think about what is the impact, what is the effect? And specifically what is the emotional effect and the emotional impact of light on your subject and within your photograph. So light, it's light in itself is a subject that the quality of light, whether the light is contrasty, whether the light is cool, warm, is it, does it have a particular color? Does it have a particular sensation when you look at it? We're all familiar with how light impacts our emotions. Just in a life situation. The one extreme of the horror of a flickering green fluorescent overhead light, to the beauty of a warm glowing light from a fire to the soft bathing light of a window coming through a curtain. We understand this, but we need to do is to become more conscious of it and more conscientious of how we can introduce that emotional quality of light into our picture. Taking the best way to do that, of course, is to become more conscious and conscientious of the way that we see light every day. The real bonus for us as photographers is that we get to observe light all day long. And we can see any object the most mundane, even perhaps an off-putting or an ugly, ugly object, becomes absolutely beautiful simply because of the way the light is striking it. Sometimes just light itself. Just light can be just so mesmerizing. So it's a question of training your eye. It's a question of training your senses as a photographer to not take life for granted. Especially when you're looking through your camera or you're about to take a photograph and you say, wow, this is such a beautiful object. This is such a beautiful subject. Look at my son, right? Look at my son in this photograph. That is who we're looking at in this photograph, that is my son. So in addition to my absolute love for him, is the light. The light as an additional subject, as an additional layer of what makes this photograph engaging. So start really paying attention in your day-to-day life when you wake up in the morning and you just see that light coming through the window or you're driving along and you see this speckle, these dabbled lights coming, coming through the trees, give yourself the gift of really staying with it. I can't tell you how many times I have said to non photographer, like, Wow, you see that light. And they look at me like, like I've lost my mind, they just don't see it. So again, engage with this idea, train yourself, become more aware, more present of the magic of light. And then when you start to photograph with this idea in mind, or because you've got this idea in mind, you will notice that your photographs just gets so much more interesting. They start to gain an emotional layer that they hadn't had before. And your photographs will just automatically improve. It's just the way it goes and you're aspects of your life will improve. Also, you'll find that there's a greater joy than, than, than maybe what you imagined possible just from seeing light. 13. Assignment 6 - And Then There Was Light: Your assignment for this particular lesson is, first of all to practice seeing. With more awareness, seeing light. Again, you'll notice there's a theme and my teaching that is asking you to become more present, to slow down, and to really admire and revere what's in front of you more than you had before. That's one of the, one of the great gifts of photography is this idea that you're training yourself to see this little sliver of the world. And just the right sliver at just the right time with just the right design in just the right light. So we can, we can think of light into terms is the light that we come upon. And then there's the light that we manufacturer or the light that we, that we change. So for right now for this particular assignment, we're going to focus more on available light, on existing light. So I want you to just take some time, put aside a few minutes, a few hours, and just let yourself bathed in this awareness of the magnificence of light. And then once you're seeing that light, then pick up your camera, then start to photograph and incorporate this other higher level of sensitivity into your picture taking. It's, it's a relatively simple idea, but it's a lifetime of mastery to really understand and appreciate the nature of all aspects of light from a physics perspective. Certainly from an emotional perspective, from a shaping perspective. How does the quality of light change the nature of the form of an object? So right now we're not looking to get too deep into this. We're more looking to begin to start to notice, become aware, respect what you're looking at in terms of light, and then add that into your photography. It's gonna be great. I'll see that work on the Facebook group. 14. Lesson 7 - Beyond The Subject: The title of this particular lesson is very specific. The idea of going beyond the subject means that the subject itself, as far as what it is, no longer becomes an importance to the success of the photograph. So we're saying that we're going beyond the subject. We're kinda leaving the identification of the object behind. And we're moving into another realm where that object simply becomes the manner with which to create a photograph. We're gonna go back to a teaching from a few weeks back about the concept of lines, shapes and spaces, perhaps including color this time around. And we want to start to think in terms of coming upon objects, coming upon scenes, noticing things as a photographer, that regardless of what they are, we're going to move past that. We're going to move beyond that. And we're going to be looking only in terms of making an interesting photograph. That boils down to almost the idea of a drawing, of a sketch, of something, of a carving, something that's really, really simple. If, if we were going to draw something that was of this nature, we could create something that was just lines, shapes, and spaces. We could create something that had an abstract quality to it. We could create something that was just blocks, or it was just circles, or it was just lines, are a combination of those things. The challenge with photography is we're given objects. There are objects that are placed before us, and those objects have inherent meaning. They have an inherent definition. A smokestack, in this particular case, is a smokestack. No matter how you slice it. At the end of the day, it's still a smokestack. It still gives off pollutants. It still doesn't have much of a romantic sensibility to it. But what we're looking to do here is to say, okay, interesting, but let's move beyond that. Let's just ignore what the object is, what it stands for, what its definition is, and what our, what our relationship is to it. And let's simply see it as an object that we can use to design a photograph the same way that we would take shapes that color form shapes or we would create shapes and we would design them on the page. We're gonna do the same thing with this. When you're practicing this idea when you're out there in the world and you're fine tuning your skills as a photographer and you're engaging in the practice of seeing, started thinking in those terms, start noticing just the design that these objects create. Notice the juxtaposition of shapes with one another. Notice the relationships of objects and backgrounds, just simply in terms of how things fit together graphically from a design perspective, and completely ignoring what the object stands for and what your relationship is to it. Sometimes the more obscure, the more unusual, the more surprising your decision to include a particular object in your photograph because of its, perhaps it's negative connotation or it's negative definition, or the fact that maybe it's off-putting, or maybe it's just something that is typically not seen as beautiful and not celebrated for its beauty. Oftentimes, going in search of those objects and saying, Okay, I know that that's a crumbled piece of paper. I know that's a trash can. I know that that is a dead bird. Okay, Now let's move beyond it. Let's look at its shape. Let's look at its design. Let's look at its color. Let's look at its form. Let's look at the light that's hitting it. Let's look at the background. Thinking in all of these terms and really divorcing yourself of your attachment to the object for what it actually is, is going to move your photography into a much more interesting place. Maybe adding some contradiction in there, maybe adding some contrast between the meaning of the subject and the display or the interpretation, the expression of that subject is just going to make your photography so much more interesting. 15. Assignment 7 - Beyond The Subject: Your assignment for this lesson beyond the subject is to create a photograph where you're actually intentionally seeking an object that you don't typically identify as beautiful, something that has, has a quality to it that you would never think of as, oh, I can't wait to make a photograph of that because It's so interesting. It could be something really boring. It could be something ugly, it could be something disgusting. It could be something that you just don't have a particular interest in. What you're asking yourself to do is to notice that is there a built-in prejudice against that object? Is there so much judgment that you find it really difficult to move beyond its definition. Just kinda become aware of that, and then move beyond it. Look at the object purely for the sake of its design. Look at how it fits within the background. Look at its shape, look at its form, look at its beauty in a new light. If you possibly can stay with the object photograph at a few different ways and see what it's like to just let yourself move deeper into your awareness to move deeper into an expression that is an artistic expression that comes more from your heart and soul than it does from your brain. And you'll see that you'll be making more interesting photographs. Immediately. Get to work. Post those photos on the Facebook group, and let's see what you can do with it. 16. Lesson 8 - Beauty Is Skin Deep: In the last assignment, beyond the subject, I asked you to pretty much divorce yourself of the definition of an object and have a subject and to move past it, to move beyond it and into the realm of seeing that object in terms of its design potential, right? So in this particular lesson, beauty is skin deep. I'm asking you to take that one step further. I'm asking you to actually notice that an object that is very specifically off-putting, that is seen as somehow gruesome or as this ugly, something that we would rather just discard is actually something that has the potential to create beauty. It really just a question of shifting and broadening your perspective so that you are having the opportunity to stay with something that is difficult. It's not all that different than staying in in an in an interaction with somebody that's painful, that's difficult, and just being with it and working your way through it. And then inevitably you find you come out the other side and you see that there was beauty in that also. So pardon, pardon my psychology. Little offshoot there. But I think there's definitely something to tie together with this idea that we, our tendency is to move away from things that are difficult to see, difficult to experience. But we find that if we can stay with it, oftentimes, our experience of that object or of that situation actually transforms. And we actually do see something new. We come upon a level and a layer of beauty that we otherwise would not have the opportunity to experience. Because our tendency is, let's get rid of things that are difficult. Let's get rid of things that are ugly. Let's get rid of things that we just don't feel comfortable around. So in this particular case, we want to, we want to push the limits of this idea of not only we going beyond any particular subject, but we're actually looking to, in this case, kind of go through to transform our experience of being with an object that we, that we identify as being somehow ugly or being distasteful. And we wanna be able to see through that, through that prejudice, through that judgment, and move into the realm of photography as, as an act of creating beauty. 17. Assignment 8 - Beauty Is Skin Deep: The assignment for this particular session is fairly self-evident, but not necessarily easy. I'm asking you to go out in search of an object, of a subject that you find particularly off-putting, something that you identify as ugly, something that you'd rather not look at all the very best. You'd rather take it and throw it in the garbage. And I'm asking it, it's just sort of be with that object in terms of just an object of beauty, but in a way that you haven't considered before in terms of its texture, in terms of its color, in terms of its being. Maybe, maybe you're looking to place the object on a background that really highlights the object in a way on to maybe on a solid black background or a solid white background. Something that says to the viewer, you know what, It's okay to stay with this. It's okay for you to have an experience that makes you feel maybe a little bit awkward and confused. And nonetheless, you can't deny the fact that there's something beautiful about it. So it kinda opens your eyes, it opens your imagination. It passes you through that corridor of judgment where perhaps you're, you're leaving things out of your picture taking. Because, because of that tendency to move more toward things, experiences that are lovely. Lovely experiences make for lovely photographs. They don't necessarily make for art. They can. But for the sake of having an experience that's part of this learning process. This is going to push you a little bit out of your comfort zone and into the creation of something that has a little bit more depth, some more layering, some more complexity, and see what happens. I wish you luck with this one. It's actually, it can be a lot of fun, but it can be awkward at the same time. So make those photos, post them on the Facebook page and we'll see you there. 18. Lesson 9 - Boil It Down: Forgive me harping on this idea for yet another week, but it is just so crucial that we start thinking in terms of photographs. In their simplest terms, it's really the difference between, between a novel and a poem. Photographs are poems, movies are novels. At least that's the way I like to think of them. So what we're looking to do is in one frame, in one simply composed frame is to convey a very large idea. So in this particular photograph that you're seeing of the ore and the reflection of the or in the water. If we're left with what is that a photograph of and we're left with it's a photograph of an OR then we have a dead photograph. What would I would say the photograph fails. Okay. But that's not what this is. This is so much more about creating that single object that reduced, boiled down back to basics idea, but really starting to layer in emotionality into the equation. And that's what poetry is about. The difference, let's say between a beautiful moving epic poem in a nursery rhyme. Nursery rhymes are lovely. Beautiful moving, emotive epic poetry is so much more than that. It's evocative. It has you thinking it has a haunting quality to it. And that's really when we start to layer in our own emotional experience and combine it with this simplification. That's when photography gets up there into a whole different level. So again, I know I'm harping on an idea quite a bit here, but it is, it is in my experience, probably one of the most important and perhaps one of the most difficult things to do is to use design and use the sense of space and how you place objects and where you place objects in a way that when all is said and done, that you've taken this, this concept that was portrayed in a 90 minute movie, and you have reduced that down into one single image inside of one single frame. And that's really what this is all about. So the more that you think about this, That's the more you're thinking like a photographer. I can't tell you how many students have mine over the course of the years when they've been given an assignment, have come back with an idea and said, well, I have, I have this way that I want to portray this idea and I'm going to do it in three photographs, right? No. I mean, sure you can, but that's not what this is about. That's a little bit of a cop-out and thinking in terms of how am I going to convey a story in a linear way, in a way that has to do with a beginning, middle, and end. Which when you think about it poem that's not the case. A poem is more like I'm going to use words. I'm going to use language in a way that creates this sense of an idea, a sense of an experience, a sense of space and time. But I'm not going to say in chapter one we did this and then this happened. And then that happened. Where more saying No, what's left over in the end. The the residual experience for me, the residual emotion, the memory, the way that I've been impacted, is portrayed in a single frame. And that's our goal. 19. Assignment 9 - Boil It Down: Now your assignment for boil it down is to once again, to return to the idea of being able to convey a feeling, a sensibility through one single image by reducing down something from its big story. It's n, It's linear quality of beginning, middle, and end. And just saying, when I've had that experience, when I've really metabolize that experience. And I'm left over with this single image that allows me to recall that experience. It allows me to recall that feeling and it stays with me. What does that image look like? And it can be something certainly that you can ponder, something that you can conceive of and then you can go out and execute it. It's also something that just as you're becoming more and more aware of the fact that this is what great photographs do, that you will naturally come upon it. It's because your way of seeing is going to start to shift, it's going to evolve, it's going to mature. So again, stay with the practice, stay with the practice of reduction, stay with the practice of minimization. These are the things that are going to take your photography up, up into a different realm that are going to allow you to create those haunting images that just are embedded with meaning. So that's your assignment now, I wish you the best, have fun with it. And when you're all done, don't forget to post those photographs in the Facebook group. 20. Lesson 10 - Breathing Room: This section is called breathing room. And it's really all about leaving lots and lots of empty space in your photograph. Why would we choose to do so? You may notice that there is a prevailing theme, at least for these first weeks of this course, that a lot of the way that I create photographs that specifically with the intention of creating a sense of peace and tranquility. It's just my nature. So now it's your nature also. At least for now it is. So when we think in terms in this particular photograph, we can say, well, it's a beautiful beach and this is a quiet beach. And that sense of quiet is multiplied by there being so much space. For some people it might be spaced to drown in. And for some people it might be space to breathe. But that space itself really needs to be seen as, as much of an object and having as much importance, if not even more important than the quote unquote, objects and subjects themselves, in this case, those few people. So this is a shift again in thinking from space being something that is the absence of something and space actually being the subject itself, the protagonist, this photograph is all about space. Now, sort of like from a, from a Zen perspective, the space within the cup couldn't exist without the cup. So is the cup about the space or is the cup about the physical cup itself? This is again, that kind of interplay that we're looking at between the objects in the photograph that create that space, the space itself. The most important part of this lesson is the space itself. And that's where we want to be focused. So when you're thinking about this and you're contemplating the photographs that you want to make, It's really important that the space itself be really clean. That there's a clear space that, that when we focus our eyes on that void that we're not looking at clutter, that we're not distracted. There were actually able to settle into that space almost like the Grand Canyon. It's it's the whole it's the void that is the subject. And in this case we're looking at that same idea. So start paying more attention to that emptiness. Not as something that's missing, but more as something that is created by the other objects that are in the photograph. 21. Assignment 10 - Breathing Room: In this assignment, we're out for space exploration space, the final frontier. We're out there to explore space. So the same way that we can look up in the night sky, and we can only notice the stars. We can shift our awareness and we can shift our intentionality to looking at the spaces between the stars, the void inside the cup, or in this particular case and my photograph, the sand that was on the beach, the sand and the emptiness. Emptiness as form itself, emptiness as an object, emptiness as the subject, as the protagonist. That's what we're after. So take your camera, go out into the world. Go, go into your living room, go into your backyard, and seek that space. Pay attention to the spaces between objects. See what it's like to create this sense of vastness, of a void, of emptiness, which will convert most likely into some sense of quiet 2D. But it could also convert into a sense of danger. It could convert into a sense of looking energy that exists within that space. So play with it yourself, see what comes up, experiment. And simply by engaging in the process, you will discover things about your photography and maybe even about yourself that you may be surprised with. So get to work. This is really a fun one. And once you've got some images that you'd like to share with the group. Pop them into the Facebook group, and give people a chance to see your work and share their comments.