Monday, December 8, 2008

wall


How big are these bricks? Closest guess gets a free kiss from coby, the iso monkey mascot.
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3 comments:

Samantha Shanti said...

This is a wonderful artsy shot. Feeling, movement, color, energy and range. And it's just bricks. Any schulb can pick up a camera, but having an eye, and being able to capture what you see, and how it makes you feel, now that is the mark of a photgrapher.

You my friend, have that eye.

Sparky said...

Thanks for that. Amusingly enough, After this shoot, I was incredibly frustrated with what's become of my eye. My quality to crap ratio has dropped way off in the last year. last year I'd come home from a shoot with 3 or 4 good shots. lately it's been one or 2. I've been running some exercises to help with that, but they haven't quite sunk in yet.

Samantha Shanti said...

You're welcome. One of the true joys of shooting digital is I can hammer away and not worry so much about the keepers or the ratio.

When I was shooting professionally years ago with film, I'd ALWAYS shoot twice as many frames as needed in a kind of photographic equal of measure twice, cut once. Customers where always thrilled, because all my packages came with twice as many rolls of film as anyone else's... Because I wanted to be sure I got THE shot. Even hand loaded my own film from bulk rolls...

Now, I still shoot way more than needed, content to allow my eye, my heart, to guide my camera. For me it's a "mindfulness" thing, getting into the zone and shooting away. I let my inner muse free, and magic happens.

Rules and exercises can be great things, especially when learning the craft, but never sell your eye short. The beauty with digital is it's easy to just throw away the crap and skip the ratio all together. Bet you didn't know that rules (like the rule of thirds) are based on a set of formulas the greats came up with year ago while trying to "teach" someone how to make art.

I like to think of them as just a suggestion and instead go with what feels right. Some of my best shots have been feeling the light, seeing it and letting that vision flow. I've shot side by side with other photographers who've said "You can't do that, it will never work...

Yeah, right, what lose a money shot?! And I'd never listen to them. I'd get the impossible shot, and they'd be left wondering how I did that.

The trick to exercising the eye? Well to borrow a line: "Use the Force Luke!" Sometimes it's good to have a day where you just go shooting, let your eye guide your hand, and throw the rules out the window. You have a gift there Sparky, use it. Don't worry about ratios or rules, stops, or technical stuff, just go looking at things that looks good and try to freeze them for later.

If you have the eye (and it looks from here like you do) the technique will follow.