Friday May 05, 2006

Photography as a contemplative event. A composition, a statement, a point of view.

This is not an approach encouraged by today's digital camera technology which allows one to take literally hundreds of shots and then sort out the good from the bad later. There's something not very satisfying about chewing up gigabytes of space with photos that I never quite get around to reviewing, editing, culling.

I took a landscape photography class last year at the Rhode Island School of Design. Our instructor insisted that we take every photograph for the class on a tripod as a way of forcing us to compose our shots. It wasn't until well after the class was over that I really understood what he was doing---and how badly I had failed. Sure, I used a tripod at every location we visited. And I blasted through my 1 GB memory cards like there was no tomorrow. Hundreds of photos, some very nice. And many not worth the write-cycle used to save them to disk. Exposure bracketing is one thing, but massive compositional bracketing is another. Where's the art or craft in that?

One approach to taking better photos is to study the works of others. I have several books that I've found inspirational. For example, Sam Abell: The Photographer's Life is a wonderful collection to ponder. Another fantastic (and free) resource is the Daily Critique section of The Radiant Vista website. While my focus is the Daily Critique, do check out the other features on the site--a Photoshop Workbench, Video Tutorials and PDF Tutorials, etc. Wonderful stuff.

Each day a 3-5 minute video segment is posted on the site (RSS feed available). The format is simple and very effective. A landscape photograph--submitted by a beginning, intermediate, or advanced photographer--is displayed and critiqued. The reviewer, Craig Tanner, first discusses what he likes about the photo and then turns to considering in a perfect world might be changed to create a stronger composition. He will often recrop the image or make some other adjustment to illustrate his points, an approach I find very useful.

I've watched perhaps a dozen critiques so far and all have been informative. I also find I'm starting to look at both photos and landscapes in a different way. It has been a literally eye-opening experience.

I highly recommend the Daily Critique for all you camera-toting world travellers. Tune up your eye a bit and see what happens.