The Best Way To Instantly Improve Your Photography
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- čas přidán 13. 09. 2024
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Many new photographers have been sold a lie by camera manufacturers and social media that it is all about sensor size, mega-pixels, bokeh and dynamic range when the real essence of photography is story telling and as an artform. We seem to have forgotten the art of photography and we get bombarded with the "next best thing since sliced bread" virtually everyday, but hardly hear, read or see next works of art and photography.
The Time Life Series came out when I was an undergraduate student. (That should date me! 😉) About 6 years ago I came across a book store that had the whole series. I bought the lot. They’re fantastic. As Alex mentioned, they’re great for giving yourself assignments if you’re looking for a ‘jump start’ at times. Or to just peruse while you enjoy your favorite beverage.
I received the Time/Life series from my fabulous artist aunt the year they came out. They changed everything about how I thought about my and all photography. I read and sought anything I could read about photography, which in the pre-internet world meant a library card or buying from a used bookstore. In a small town, the pickings were slim. Alex has reminded me, which I had completely forgotten, of the value to your work of exposure to excellent images from as many different perspectives as you have the time and/or money to acquire - so easy nowadays with the internet.
One of the most inspiring magazines today is the LFI magazine from Leica. It is affordable and quite the opposite of what may be expected from a luxury company like Leica. If you’re at a train station or airport and don’t want to stare at your stupid phone for some hours, give it a try.
Loved the pics of “Life” magazine. Those images, those colors made me love photography.
My mom inherited the Time Life books from my grandfather, and I discovered it as a teenager. I loved browsing through its pages, but never made a serious attempt to learn photography til this year. I'm excited to pore through these books during my next visit home!
Wonderful!
I never went to art school but instead spent my time collecting photo books - both books about a type of photography or theme and those produced by a single photographer. Each week, I take one off the shelf and examine it. I continue to buy photo books - just got a copy of the reprint of Ward 81.... and I recently ordered Sixteen World, vol 9 - their photo edition.
It seems that many of the photographers I encounter online only scroll Instagram or flip through CZcams.... holding a physical book in your hand and allowing yourself to look into the photo under different lights and different moods offers an experience that can't be found with the backlit vibration of online images.
Thanks for the excellent video here and I hope the thousands who view it take heed and go find a few books to start their collection.
Robert Mapplthorpe: Look at the Picture a great one. Very insightful and personal about his life.
The old saying applies - I wish I knew then what I know now.
I've been basically on the photographic "back burner" for the last little while. I have never been enthralled with the newest/latest/greatest in photo gear. I have film cameras and digital as well. They are enough for me. At 73, I really don't think I'll need to change unless something breaks and cannot be repaired. Those cameras take pictures just fine, its more on me to make better photos than last year. I just need to pick up the cameras more often.
I do remember those time life books. They inspired me quite a bit. I was in high school at the time and couldn’t get enough of information on photography. Good understandable, information was hard to come by and those time life books presented it in a way that others didn’t.
Thanks so much for providing information on have to make better photographs. It’s not about gear and technique but about the why.
My pleasure!
My father had that time life series in his library. Thanks to these books and his dented Nikormat I quickly developed the desire to express and grow my own perspective . It been become a lifelong journey that I hope continues till my last breath. So happy you shed some light on this fabulous series of books.
Thanks for watching
Great video as always! I was an assistant for Richard Noble (13:29 timestamp) in the early nineties. He was, and still is, an amazing talent. It was an honor and a privilege watching him work.
Thanks for sharing!
I've been working on a book lately that, among other things, really focuses on the "why" informing the "how" so this speaks so perfectly to that mindset (and is a big part of why I enjoy this channel!)
Love that!
Hi Alex, There is nothing weird about you, just a passionate, enthusiastic and a person who speaks a lot of sense. We certainly can learn a lot about reading photography books, they don't write about gear reviews. Great point when you said making photographs feel less like a Science and more like an Art. Liked the Mario Giacomelli photos, very original with the Black clothes looking like a nice Silhouette. Thanks for another great video.
Thank you for watching
@@ThePhotographicEye Your very welcome Alex 🙂
Another brilliant video, Alex.
Videos like this opened my eyes.
What we produce today are mostly snapshots.
These pioneers are too quickly and too often overlooked.
While we can still learn a lot from these "elderly" photographers.
And I mean this with great respect.
I too have been such a snapshot photographer.
However, by looking at these photographers and analyzing their work, I have become a completely different photographer.
Thank you for this video my friend
Antoine.
Your welcome.
Love your videos ❤ thank you for always bringing up interesting discussions. Hi from Cape Town
Thanks for watching!
While I would like to think of myself as a "photographer," as opposed to being a "button pusher," I fear that I must certainly fall more into the latter category than the former. Having said that, it's not for lack of trying -- I long ago bought, and devoured (cover to cover) many of the books you speak of -- six of the Time-Life series, Ansel Adams' books (all of them), at least 5 of the Masters of Contemporary Photography series, and numerous others.
Sadly, I must confess that it has only been within the last few years, in what can only be called the twilight of my life, that I have come to a more complete understanding of what I had read in all of these excellent works about the art of photography. It is only now, as my age and physical conditions take an ever increasing toll on my ability to do much of anything, that I think I may have finally crossed over that barrier, and moved -- if ever so slightly -- from button pusher to photographer.
Keep up the great work. Love your videos. And you do seem to be the only photographer on CZcams who actually talks about the "art" of photography. Everyone else is all hung up in the nuts and bolts, even the one who think they are talking art. Well done.
Thank you so much for watching
Back in the pre web days the only way to discover artist or photographers was mainly by chance before you reached university. Even if you went to the library. Not every library had specialist genres. And finding information on contempory photographers or artist was almost impossible in a small town away from the big cities. I think most of the art programme on tv where on after 11pm on a school night. But still managed to watch 'Ways of Seeing' by chance.
Thank you. All the best.👍📷😎
Thanks, you too!
I think there are so many automated features on cameras now that is too easy to skip over a lot of the learning process and just let the camera do most of the work, even though you may still end up with good results. I recently started shooting in RAW+jpg because I’m about to go on a family holiday and need the jpgs for impatient family members. It reminded me how I used to shoot with film, not having computer software to correct less than perfect exposure and I am now trying to get the ‘perfect’ image in camera (with backup RAW file) and going back to fully manual (I already use a modern manual lens) as people would have had to do in the days before software like Photoshop. It’s not essential to do it the way I now am but it’s helping me to get a much better understanding as I have felt relying on too many camera features to make decisions for me has just made me quite lazy and get into a bad habit, not really returning home with much better results than I could have taken.
One more photographer’s work that I can recommend is Pentti Sammallahti, his work is exquisite!
Yes! Great video! I see the essence of creating a body of work is the moving through something. For some, it’s more compartmented; others move through lifelong creative arcs that don’t diverge as much. Right now, I am drawing and painting after years of photography. I wonder if I will pick it up again.
Most of my best shots have been shot with "inferior" cameras. There is something to be said about not taking things so seriously and cultivating pure fun and imagination. Quality, powerful cameras sometimes make me freeze up as if I feel I have to do the camera justice by not taking a crap shot.
Now I just need to take that fun/imaginative attitude with me when I have my "serious" camera.
Time life bought all 17 volumes 1978ish
I received 1 a month
Looking at them now on my bookshelf.
There’s a lot of forgotten knowledge in these books
I'm glad i found your channel. So inspiring. Thank you very much!
Thanks for watching
It's the art of teaching you(or teaching yourself) to see what you're looking at. And then divorcing what you now see from the full physical reality of the scene, but to see the light and how it creates the image you're going to record, not the physical creating what you see. It's a never ending course, hopefully. But you often see a new vision become the only vision that person sees for a while in endless iterations.
Took workshops with Heisler and Maisel. BOTH required study of photogs of the past. Jay challenged participants to find a photog he had not heard of. I do a lot of museum trips. We have Strand in a show at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach right now. Lots of good photogs in show, including your fav Imogene.
Just counted them: I own 10 volumes of the Time Life series. Got them when they were published, about 74-78, in Germany. They really were my photo school, together with magazines like PHOTO and ZOOM. Many names of photographers I know from these volumes.
The problem I see today with all those references to the old masters: There is only one chance to be the FIRST in something, climbing Mount Everest, landing on the moon, discovering Manhattan with the Kodak slidefilm colors of Ernst Haas. Or Saul Leiter.
Nearly everything you can shoot today is "like" the work of some pioneer. "Like Diane. Like Duane. Like Pete or Peter. Like Ansel." And so on, be it in color or BW.
I do fashion photography as a hobby and I try to shoot "like" Hans Feurer. (starting his career in the 70s) Gives me great pleasure although I know I am not inventing something new here. And how could I?? Use the long lenses as he still does, use wide angles as Jeanloup Sieff or Guy Bourdin, use flash the way Ellen von Unwerth does: It has all been there already. You can be good, but there is hardly any chance in my opinion to be "new". (Sigh.)
lol true! but I comfort myself that life is a "remix", everything is a remix, and even the greats of the 20th century were standing on the shoulders of the giants of the 19th century. Now what was it that Picasso said about "borrowing"? :)
@@mike_lambert That's only partial true. But fits in every party conversation. Lazy. Of course Picasso invented something NEW, not a remix. He was able to do so because of his genius and because he did not live in the 17th century. or the 16th. And so on.
Always on point, just signed up for Saturday Selections, ex-Cape Town, living in Cusco, Peru 😊
Another great and thought-provoking video. I remember my first photography class, a "beginning" class taught by Henry Wessel Jr., and most of that class was looking at work, through slide shows or visits to galleries and museum shows like a major Winogrand exhibition making the rounds at the time (this was 1988 or 1989). Sure we learned some practical stuff, I remember clearly Hank as we called him teaching us how to pull film, a previously unknown concept to me, to have flatter negs and then using the enlarger to produce desired results, but mostly it was looking at work, some from his contemporaries like Arbus, Meyerowitz, Shore et al, and all the others, Sander, Bresson you name it. (And a fair amount of his own work, which at that age I didn't "get", LOL.)....What I'm usually served up by the algorithm gods however, are videos about sharpness and "how to get that [photographer name] look" drivel.....As for recommendations, I would recommend the "Contacts" series of DVDs (I think there were three.).....Lastly, intentional or not, I appreciate the irony of your thumbnail 😉
Lol. I started learning with those Time Life books when they were new. Still have them.
You've introduced me to a number of photographers I knew nothing about, most notably; Michael Kenna and Ernst Haas. Thank you for your videos and news letter.
Thanks for watching
Love this, great video, thanks
Glad you enjoyed it!
I bought the entire time life photography set last christmas. I haven't been able to read it yet, but soon I hope.
Yet another great material about photography. I enjoyed it very well. Great job and thank you for being on YT.
I like english language which gives option to differentiate in terms of photography, like take a picture (snapshot) and make a photo. For most people it's the same while for me is two different aspects.
As adult person I developed my personal attitude to photography. Like, I don't need the latest and greatest gears to make good picture or photography. I just started do what I love. I dump the idea that someone dislike it, where while ago I tried to reach as much likes as I could. About 10 years ago (or even more) I made first 365 project which was not perfect to be honest, but I kept so many places and so many people that has changed now and I love to see how they different now. So it is Like a books that you presented today, it is a kind of time capsule, that we have on the shelve. Sadly though, I think that kind of photography is lost nowadays, because of GDPR and personal property to identity (stuff like that) has ruined photography that you showed. That's why those books are a treasure, and I personally would collect them.
Do you think Steichen is right or wrong to say people who just photograph how others do are simply button pushers?
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I get Steichen's point, too many take the 'traditional shot of X' because that is 'what everyone else does' without thinking about what they are doing in meaningful way. To me he is say a real photographer thinks about the image they want to take and how to take the best image whether it is the 'traditional shot' or something else. I don't know how many group 'selfies' I have been in were there wasn't much thought of composition given.
Ah Time Life yes my top shelf has a couple of their Special Editions but it also has those that started it all Bresson,Strand,Lartigue,Weston,Adams of course and I guess about half a generation later Terence Donovan . Most of the earlier listed titles I studied while on C&G course back in the late 90's . Loved the Darkroom but I digress. It is difficult to be original in this day and age but it's fun trying . Thanks for the nudging on the channel 😉
9:54 track is called "Melting Glass" by Eden Avery.
both (hybrid) deoends on the situation (studio or outdoors) informative video.
Wonderfull content I never tire of your videos thank you
Thank you for watching
I believe that people can learn this before the basics of photography. Some people think so much about glam, sharps, and IQ. But they forget that the pictures can say more than the fashion, and the freezing time. We need to think, we need to talk with other models. In IG we can find many pictures with Boke, and no more than Boke, and that is a sad fact.
Maybe we need more talking about camera controls, and why cameras are better for art than smartphones. We need to create a group of people with a taste. This task is for artists, teachers, and brands.
Some incidents ruined a film photo, and now we have a crisis in digital photography too.
❤ Waiting for new videos.
Thanks for sharing.
Our pleasure!
Whenever I feel like my spark is done and I've become a dry out dead dreamed person and feel like I have nothing left in me to pick up the camera ever again, I come to your videos.
And everytime I come out gaining my hopes back.
Thank you for your work
That’s awesome, thanks for watching
I do both 😅😂✌🏽👍🏽
Yes!!!! I think I see the same lack here. Most people’s learning about photography consists of learning how to operate a camera and that’s it. So then they go into the world and try to create meaningful, impactful images that provoke thought and moves emotions. But they can’t because they never learned that part. It’s because they never learned how to think through the process of doing so. It’s as if they learned how to type without learning how to write. Sure they may operate the equipment flawlessly, but they don’t know how to communicate.
In what I teach, I try to teach this skill of how to think about what you want the image to communicate it. As I express it, I teach -do-lie to take photos about things and not merely of things. In all honesty, I find that to be a minority interest. Most people seem to have little interest in that. But, for those who are interested, they react like they are in a dark room and someone just turned the lights on. If a teachers most important payment is the “aha” moments they create, then I get paid big time for that class because there are a lot of aha moments where people tell me they’ve learned there is a whole lot more to photography than they imagined. I love it and I wish that kind of photography education were more widely available.
I find that many people can operate camera controls perfectly well. But that ability to have a concept of what they want to express through their image is what they lack. As long as they remain stuck in the land of camera settings, they will never cross that sea and really get into the art of it. They gotta spend the time to learn the skill of artistic, photographic thinking about what they want to create.
Yes. It’s also people who equate photo quality to the specs in their cameras and the quality of lenses. None of those will help improve anyone’s skills and make them an instantly better photographer.
@@creative_cozmic an awful lot of people truly believe the gear is more responsible for a quality photo than the photographer. That’s obviously not true. These days every beginner has better equipment than Ansel Adams. But they are no comparison to Ansel Adams.
@@angelamaloney4871 I see so many comments, people wanting more dynamic range, more megapixels, better iso performance and better sensors. It’ll get to the point where you’d be able to take a well exposed photo in pitch black without any loss of quality and all the enjoyment of photography gone. Having restrictions and limits allows us to be more creative and is both a challenge and very rewarding.
Amazing content 🔥🔥
I have a bad mental block when it comes to the technical part of cameras, and RAW processing. However I still manage to create photographs I feel proud of and get a thrill staring at my creations. Does anybody else like them.... I don't care.
You gotta start somewhere Pushing those buttons starts you off.
I will say since wathing your videos, I pay attention to the over all. I get ideas from just above everywhere
I forgot to mention one of the greats, shots with such feeling one of the American Depression Greats. Dorothea Lange
I still have those time life books I think I got the subscription for them late 70s early 80s
And while I was still in the Navy stationed overseas, I did that correspondence course and you would mail the negatives back to them, and then you would mail the prints back to them
I have to see if I can find my “” diploma
Your video reminded me that my father had the set of Time Life books when I was a youth and they were indeed wonderful to look at. Sadly, I don't know what became of them.
Thanks for watching
Button Pusher and proud of it !
When I at college studying photojournalism, a professor at the most prestigious art school penned a letter criticizing his school. His criticism was that they were graduating extremely skill technician, but not one graduate that would be capable of making art. This ending up being a topic of conversation among schools that had any programs in the creative arts about whether you could teach artistic skills or whether the best you could get from your education was the technical aspects. Long story short this professor lost his position.
Best video on photograph. Yup those were good books. If I hear one more bokeh wide open bs on yt. 😂 So much to it than that.
practicing the technicals is important- it's how you learn how to give your photographs substance. but a purely technical photograph will have no emotion.
Thanks so much - btw Threads is still harrowing..
@@ThePhotographicEye I always appreciate it when people recognize my profile picture.
I dread looking at other photographers work, for the fear of just copying without understanding.
Do I have news for you; all people are weird. The weirdest ones come in flocks.
Bailey once said, the difference between him and a chimp was, a chimp can take a good image, he might manage two" I'm ok being a chimp with a camera.
I believe that photographers need to know the fundamentals to the point that they become automatic. Then they need to focus on using their creative brain to make the photographs they want to make.
I've listen enough suggestions that to become a better photographer, you need to work on some (preferrably long term) projects. It sure sounds easy but once you do that... man actually that's hard. Really, being commited ain't easy. At least that's my experience. Taking single shots is much easier.😅
Please do not eat your own food! Great handwritten sign. 14:10
Approaching photography with a formulaic approach means you risk becoming a technician rather than an artist. You want people to say, "wow! What a fantastic image!," rather than, "wow! What beautiful technical work, what lens did you use?" You want the image to be the primary point of interest and the technical aspects to be secondary at best. Being too consistant and formulaic eventually leads to uniformly boring photographs after the novelty of the first few photographs.
Is there such a thing as a "bad" photograph? I see some of the pictures you show of "masters" and they maybe ok but I don't find them great or note worthy. A great photo is what the viewer likes and for them it is great a Master photo. Is there such a thing as a bad photograph?
Pardon my English, I am in the USA.
The Time Life books I bought back in the early 80s. They were wonderful and still are. Unfortunately I let them go. Thanks from Ottawa Canada.
Thanks for watching
New filter on your video...? A bit of desaturation... (why?) ;-)
I joke about leaning on CZcams University. With that metaphor, we would need a doctoral level or a course in the philosophy of art to begin the conversation of why a photo is taken.
..pushing a button has become like an act of contrition..as I have gotton older I feel more guilty and the thought process stumbles on procrastination..my photography using film 40 years ago was genuine..digital imagery is well convenient and stylized..and to be honest my photography has not gotten any better..so I resort to AI to get inspiration and reference 😜 mages
Leibovicz has lost all my admiration when the embarked on the Zelenski 's photographic promotion for Vogue. Not only the choice of content and composition were poor with staged images almost ridiculous but I found the overall project so miserable and purely mercantile and photographically shallow and this is an euphemism.
I got all of those silver books in the mail by mistake somehow, in late '70's - they were OK...
I have 10 or 11 of the time life set. I got them when they were being discarded from the library where my mother worked when I was in college. I think they sparked an early interest in macro photography. One particular book was talking about how the depth of field problem had been addressed by using a reversing ring. In the years since I have tried that technique but found it too fiddly. (Maybe I was doing it wrong and should get them out and have another look but I am pretty happy with my extension tubes.)
I haven't looked at them in years. They are in a plastic bin in my basement.
After reading @creative_cozmic 's comment, I had to agree with him.
An acquaintance recently sent me a roll of film (He is starting a brand for those who want to shoot film again) and so I dug out my old Minolta XG-1. I have shot 20 exposures on the roll in the same amount of time as I have shot nearly 4,000 images with my digital. I *plan* the film shots. I am *careful* about the exposure. (In fact I will usually shoot the same thing with the digital just to double check before pressing the shutter.
It's a weird experience. It brings back all my college days concerns about the cost of the film and the developing. It makes me appreciate the way I can afford to experiment with the digital while also making me once more aware of the basics that were/are so essential with film.
@Call_Me_Mom Hi Mom. Of course we speakers of the King's English (the language formerly known as the Queen's English) would say "Hi Mum", but that spoils the joke! 🙂
I generally have film days and digital days where I only carry the one camera, and mostly shoot B&W film on film days, and then develop it myself. You're right about being more deliberate with film. Funny, back in the late 60s when I was at university (yes, I was there AND I remember them) I would happily blaze away. Looking at the photos now most are rubbish!