Photography Article August Photography Book Club: week 1|Photography Artist Statement

Welcome to the August Photography Book Club and our take a look at of Freeman Patterson'sPhotography and the Art of Seeing. An evaluation approximately the Book Club and the ideas behind it are in this preceding submit. If you don?T have get entry to to a replica of the ebook, you could nevertheless be part of in by using taking part within the sporting events and reflections under. If you do have the e book, you?Ll have plenty greater material to draw upon and paintings with.

For week 1 (August 1-tenth), we are able to awareness on the first sections: Barriers to Seeing and Learning to Observe. Below, I?Ve furnished a few quotations and sporting activities that struck me from those sections. (All page numbers refer to the 2011 version.)

Barriers to Seeing

?The cause of this e-book is to help you enhance your visible thinking ? To take a look at more as it should be, to expand your creativeness, and to express a subject or subject greater effectively with pics? (pg. Five).

?Letting go of self is an vital precondition to actual seeing ? As long as you're worried approximately whether or not you may be able to make correct photographs, or are involved approximately taking part in yourself, you are unlikely either to make the nice pictures you can or to revel in the joy of pictures to the fullest? (pg. 7).

In the first phase, Patterson offers numerous pix taken in or close to his domestic, in addition to an outline of that ?Improved sensitivity? Feeling one has while returning domestic and briefly seeing your familiar area in an unexpected light. This week, try to see your private home or your ordinary environment in an surprising way and capture that seeing for your snap shots. Or, in case you are travelling, capitalize on the unfamiliarity of being in a brand new area to heighten your cognizance.

I was drawn to the pattern and texture of this red chair on my deck, and I particularly liked how this perspective created the slight blurring as your eyes move towards the bottom.Red Chair by Archaeofrog on Flickr

Learning to Observe

The 2nd section is split into important thoughts: questioning sideways and relaxed attentiveness. Try one or each of these tactics and percentage the way it impacted your mind or photography.

An exercising in thinking sideways: ?Draw up a listing of some photographic rules; then go out and break them.? So, as an instance, if you provide you with the rule ?Always keep your camera regular,? Then go out and ?Jump up and down in a forest, and press the shutter release as you bounce? (pg.27). See how doing some thing exceptional can educate you something new. Remember that ?Your emotional reaction is each bit as critical as your rational response? (pg. 28). Or strive one of the many other physical games in wondering sideways provided inside the book.

While spending time thinking and photographing underneath a pine tree in the yard, I was struck by the patterning of this partially opened pine cone. I decided to try breaking the rule of keeping objects in focus and liked how this blurry view emphasized the patterns. Unfocused Fractal by Archaeofrog on Flickr

An exercise in relaxed attentiveness: “Set aside a minimum of three one-hour periods this week for making pictures … Assemble your basic photographic equipment … Choose something around your home – inside or outside – that you want to photograph” (pg. 37). For each period, spend the first 15-20 minutes sitting down, relaxing your body, and emptying your mind of everything. Only then should you “get up from the chair, pick up your camera, and start making photographs of the object you selected earlier … Stay relaxed, spend all the time you want observing your subject matter, and make only two or three pictures, if that is all you feel like … Simply enjoy yourself” (pg. 37). If you want to push yourself further, try his additional suggestions of spending time focusing your eyes on different details each time or in trying to see thing as only base shapes.

?You can have extra ideas for photographs than you ever dreamed feasible, and be itching to show your new awareness of the world around you? (pg. Forty). Do you find this to be proper for you?

Multiple Ways to Join the Book Club

Want to participate? Post a comment along with your thoughts or a link to a image you've got taken for the Book Club and a proof of ways the book influenced your photo. Or, you may post photos and make a contribution to the dialogue by means of joining the Photography Book Club Group on Flickr.

Enjoy, and I look ahead to seeing your thoughts and images!