Developing a Keen Eye: Exercises for Better Photography
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- čas přidán 7. 09. 2024
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Did you have a nice Christmas?
I did indeed, thoughtful you ask. How was yours?
@@markbalazscseke470 quite relaxed, thank you. I spent it with my wife and my son and my mum and dad.
That's good to hear. If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to ask you to help me out with your outstanding knowledge concerning photographers around the world.
I'm in need of inspiration. I like to make pics out of dim colours, with concepts rather simple than complex, and at times additional "filters" to make them look vintage, but I digress. If you could suggest one or two photographers I could inspirate from, I'd greatly appreciate that!
@@markbalazscseke470Hey there, have you heard of the photographer Brooke Shaden? She is a very talented photographer who I think might inspire you. Her work is very layered, figuratively and metaphorically. I hope that helps! Good luck!
I think the politically correct way of saying this is "Happy Inclusive Holiday of Non-Specified Religion for those who observe!"
You hinted on knowing the type of lens for the photos you plan to take. This is something I do when on my freelance assignments simply because I know the type of photos that are expected. When I plan to go out on my own, I look at what lenses I have and simply choose one that I haven't used lately. One example is when several friends in a photo club decided to visit a museum . At that time I picked my totally manual 300mm prime lens. None of the others understood why that was the only lens I brought. When I told them it makes me think and keeps me in practice for photos that are different than the norm. Only one understood the rest just chuckled.
I've been a photographer for 6 years at this point yet I feel like I never truly understood the medium or what makes a great photo until I started watching Alex's videos this year, which have provided some great perspective and advice regarding techniques and mindsets to have while out shooting. Furthermore, I really appreciate the perspective that Alex adds to his videos by frequently showcasing some of the best photographers of the 20th century and how we can learn from them and their views of the world; very eye-opening. I hope I can fully apply these lessons to my photography, especially street, and become a better photographer after a year of zero motivation and feeling like I was my ability outright.
Thank you for watching.
He’s a great mentor and becoming significantly more so. So I agree. I’ve been photographing for 30 years and still learning.
I was watching some of your older video the other day Alex. Your guidance and advice has always been 100% but the way you talk to us or your on camera presence/persona has grown so much since you started this channel. I'm so glad you did, for us the followers and for yourself. I hope you get as much out of making these videos as I do from watching and learning from them.
Thank you so much
These videos are premium content. Like waiting for your favourite tv programme. You make a fantastic teacher Alex. You explain vague subjects in photography easy to understand rather than use vague phrases that are more vague than the subject lol. Not really into abstract photos but I do like the back of the VW beetle and the woman standing at the top of the spiral staircase, like something out of Citizen Cane, very film noir 👍
I gotta say, sitting in the car when you have nowhere else to go can be a great source of creativity! Many a day I have done just that 😂
I always choose a project and stick with it for a month or more, umbrellas, shoes, road markings, traffic lights, poles, headlights and taillights, my present project is '60s song titles
Ha! I happened to give the painting vs photography advice to my nephew just last night as he begins studying - it goes back decades that I know of. Start with the universe, then take out everything that's not the subject of your image. That subject 𝑚𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 be literal, as in a person, or a cat, or a house, but it also might be shape, pattern, color, movement, etc. The trick is realizing what in the universe helps communicate the subject of your image, and then removing everything else.
Ha! I just opened my YT app and saw this upcoming live video but had a hard time focusing on the thumbnail until I put my glasses on……… Talk about finding focus! 🤣🤣🤣
@ThePhotographicEye Alex, yours is one of the few channels where I watch every video, frequently more than once. I can't afford the latest and greatest, but your approach fits very well - make the best of what you've got.
All the best, belatedly, to you and yours for Christmas and I look forward to more of your wisdom in the New Year.
Any Chance of more videos on your portrait photography channel?
On the topic of retraining oneself.
I'm pretty new to photograph, this is my second year, so please any advice is welcome! And whichever advice I'm giving, please know the place it's coming from!
I don't know if out of stubbornness, practicality, or if so many people hammered it into my brain, but I've been taking my camera everywhere, and always sticking to a 35mm (in my camera it'd be 56mm, but that's meaningless) lens. Like, for over a semester I've been taking almost exclusively photos with that exact set-up. I'm sure I'm far from excelling at it, but I can definitely see myself improving and taking better photos, definitely better than when I carried multiple lenses or a zoom.
I've also been wanting to take more street portraits, so in the beginning I challenged me to take at least one portrait each time I went out, which helped me a lot to overcome the whole anxiety of approaching strangers. This evolved until one week I was confused enough to spend a couple days in a row exclusively taking street portraits. I think I absolutely 100% improved on my portraiture over this period (improved, definitely not up there where I'd want it to be, but I'm happier with how they come out now).
So, yeah, to whoever this advice might help:
Get one camera, one lens, put it in your daily carry bag and NEVER leave the house without it. It doesn't matter if you don't take it out one day at all, it's important that it's there, and it's important for it to become second nature someday (still working on that myself).
So there, my 2¢. Again, remember who's this advice is coming from, someone who's tiptoeing her way into photography.
Great video. Finally, an explanation of why one would want bokeh, rather than just elevating it to some abstract quality that is used by youtubers to distinguish between different lenses! I have found sitting in my living room and taking random photos just to learn how my camera responds to different light scenarios, invaluable. For example, I now almost intuitively flip between multi and spot metering on my specific camera. I really think your advice is excellent. Thanks.
My pleasure.
I always find it strange when someone asks how long have you been a photographer or I’ve been a photographer for x amount of years. When something like this, there is no counting or stopping. It just is. Like getting up in the morning and making coffee, whether or not you make an image each day, it is just a part of your life.
I think shooting in film has really been one of the best things to grow as a photographer for me.
Alex, thanks for the ongoing inspiration.
It’s so refreshing in a world full of gear!
You inspired me to look further, to learn from others and I came across a Judy Hancock Holland CZcams video on her minimalist approach. Really very good. Speaks about capturing the essence of the subject, taking a photo ABOUT the subject, not OF the subject. Illustrated by great examples.
You may have seen it already but thought it was worth mentioning.
My friend gave me a book for Christmas. It is "52 Photo Projects". just pictures to try over the year. It looks like fun. I'm sure it is doable... just get out there and work on it, and see what comes of it. Some of the weeks are things I have done... some are a bit new to me.
Thank you. It is great to find a channel that isn't focused on how to make money.
Alex, thanks. Another wonderful teaching moment. To your point about shooting around the house, when I was trying to better understand depth of field at different aperture settings and focal lengths, I set a bunch of tomatoes on my kitchen table, shot them at different f-stops and then repeated this at different focal lengths. When I finished, I looked back through my photos while I made spaghetti sauce. All in all, a rewarding afternoon.
Fantastic commentary here, with wonderful photographs you have posted.
Thank you
Hello Alex.I love all your portraits.Are you a portrait photographer? I would love to see your other images too.Wishing you all the best.Vijay-[INDIA].Wishing you a very happy new year.
Alex, you and others have hinted at studying the masters of photography and art. You do an amazing job highlighting who those masters are. I wouldn't have known them if you hadn't made the introductions. I'm fascinated with history of all types. It is fun to see your passion in the great work these people have done and telling us why you think they are cool. There are only a handful of photography channel postings I watch all the way through. Be certain The Photographic Eye is viewed from beginning to end. Thank you for the rich and original content that I enjoy. Cheers!
Thank you for watching
Great suggestions! I’ve been in a rut for a while, today I’m limiting myself to using the grainy film preset on my Olympus (contrasty black and white), and shooting at the minimum focusing distance only and 50mm equivalent field of view. It’s really interesting to see the world as out of focus blobs of bright white and deep blacks, and trying to make something interesting out of it.
I love the way you think about photography, and I really enjoy looking at the examples you show from those photographers who really stand out from the crowd. Makes me aspire to be better at it.
As I watched this my mind wandered, not because it was uninteresting but because it was too interesting.
Happy winter solstice! Hoping your heart gets lighter as the days get brighter :o) would like to see you do a crit on some of the photos and discuss why you like/dislike them
You are inspiring to watch and listen to, thank you
Wow, thank you
Thanks Alex, again more food for thought. The journey continues, the destination unknown 😮
Alex, very inspiring vieo. Your muse portraits are extraordinary
Thank you so much
Very interesting and informational, Thanks!
Our pleasure!
Good information to get a project of a theme going outside your comfort zone. We try and encourage that with our camera club members. So good to see the results. Thanks, Alex
Great video Alex, your channel is a treasure Happy New Year 🎉🎉🎉🎉
Happy new year
The thing for me was the advent of digital photography. I no longer have to worry about wasting money on a shot.
Or waiting to find out if a shot was good or not.
I can now focus much better on the shot I'm taking and if it doesn't turn out to my liking I can do it again or blow it off.
The cost is about the same.
Not that I don't like messing about with film in the darkroom. but now it's optional.
I know this wasn't the subject of your talk but for me the cost and time to process film was always a distraction.
Too funny! I spent a couple hours on a causeway closed to autos for the winter season (east gate entrance to the St Lawrence Parkway in Ontario Canada for those interested) yesterday just checking out all the possible angles and perspectives I could think of. Many moving subjects- people, dogs, and birds (mostly ravens and crows), the river on both sides, along a car-less road in the bleak no-golden light overcast sunset. Highlights included the discovery of patina's on manhole covers with stylized fish embossed on them, a particularly interesting pattern of the center line marking from ground level perspective with newly installed bench marks for an ongoing drone survey of the islands along the causeway.
Thanks for another great video, Alex! You always give me something to think about (and try).
My pleasure!
Hi Alex, this video will certainly motivate us to go out and try to photography more and experiment. Let's go out and photograph Mundane subjects and then when we least expect the great composition will appear. 😊
I find your channel very helpful as a 'provoking' viewpoint -- Not in a negative sense, but just something 'constructively outside' where I am, as it were. I like landscapes, but not because they're inherently better nor because anything else is inherently worse. I just really connect with landscapes and they're what I want to shoot. However, I don't want to ignore other areas. I feel like I'm a new photographer, but also an "old" one (at almost 65 the "old" description fits!! LOL). I first started seriously shooting 40+ years ago when as part of my graphic design university curriculum I took B&W photo classes (remember medium format Yashica TLRs?). But then there was a long dry spell until the early 2000s when I bought my first DSLR. Then another shorter dry spell until I bought my current one in late 2020. Now I think I'm hooked for good, though! I guess this is a long-winded way to say that I find after watching your videos, I start "looking" again in the way I did while studying art in college. And that's a good thing.
informative content
Wow - got it! Thanks for all these pearls of wisdom!
You're so welcome!
What I would like to see is you going out and showing us in practice how you apply what you are talking about. Using carefully selected images to illustrate a point sitting in an office doesn't give an idea of the work involved. If I would make a POV video I think there would be lots of sections that said "15 minutes later .... I walked away with zero pictures" 😊
I think as photographers it would do us better to simplify. I can hear you all laughing at this comment (including myself!). We are surrounded by our own equipment and a world offering to sell us more. A new lens, new filter, different film or indeed whatever. I think my last count I have 17 cameras. Not bragging, because I'm not alone here! We do need to be alone more with our photography thoughts and isolate them on single objects where we don't feel saturated with too many ideas or what to take with us. One camera, one lens and one project for one day. And I'm f####d if I don't practice this😅
Well said though, Alex. It's very true.
12.20 - I took a picture like that 1987 with my Agfa 335 40mm from the Vimy war memorial.
15.55 National Geographic Photographer Bob Holmes said we need to learn to see how the camera sees, not how we see.
So if I may summarize, shoot more film!
I'm half kidding. By disabling the chimp screen, or by shooting on real film, it forces confidence in what you are doing before and up to the point where the shutter closes. (It doesn't matter here what the recording medium is, whether it's chemical or digital.) The constraint here is to not view the image until we've packed up and left the site.
I'd actually never heard of the term "bokeh" until relatively recently. I've always called the result of shooting wide open either "shallow depth of field" or "selective focus". Unfortunately, bokeh seems to have become an over used "blurry background" special effect.
Alex, thank you so much for your videos this year. I’m still an unutterably untalented photographer but you keep persuading me it will get better if I do the work. Thanks for that
My pleasure!
Watching here from Saudi Arabia
Be careful if you are a woman or gay; you might get your head chopped off for watching.
I'm guessing that the first photographer is actually Elena Alexandra, not Alexnadra.
You mentioned AI. What are your feelings on AI in photography?
It was olaf gulbranson he said „drawing is the art of subtraction „
That experiment you mentioned at the end sounds to me somewhat unethical, certainly if he knew what the result would be.