This category includes articles about the art of photography. By that I mean moving away from simple technique towards the process of making a good photograph. The choices that the experienced photographer makes both on location and back in the studio.
Almost every photographer I know suffers at least slightly. Understanding gear acquisition syndrome or GAS, is important if you want to stay in charge of your photography. In 1998 at age 90, the photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, who was decidedly middle class and used a Leica, observed to the acclaimed and occasionally sharp photographer Helmut Newton:…
A Shared Visual Language The premise of this article is that understanding and absorbing visual patterns will help you to share a common visual language and take better photographs. Let me explain. When I was at film school, I was frustrated by what I perceived to be the relegation of technical skills in favour of…
Composition in Photography is the most valuable skill we can acquire. And one that I touched on in my previous article How to Develop a Photographic Eye and in more detail in How to Take Better Photographs using a Shared Visual Language. But the question of how to approach composition is often misunderstood. In forums…
12 Ways to improve your Photographic Eye There is a lot of flimflam obscuring the concept of the photographic eye. When you strip away that nonsense, I believe you are left with less of a supernatural gift and more of a mundane matter of training. I’m glad I’ve got that off my chest – now,…
Have you ever had the feeling, when you’re out walking with your camera, that the photo you take today, any photo you take today will not be as good as the one you took in the same location five years ago? Are you actually regressing as a photographer? Well, then you need a better photography…
For some people, the idea of street photography is a trigger for excruciating self consciousness and massive anxiety. Indeed, street photography for introverts can be as painful as a trip to the dentist. Personally, I’m more afraid of dentists than I am of people, but approaching strangers is definitely out of my comfort zone. The…
This post attempts to draw some strings together and define what is meant and what I mean by the Art of Photography. A difficult task as I am ambivalent myself about self styled Fine Art Photography and especially the contorted artistic statements made by so many practitioners. Spurred on by having been recently invited to…
I’ve spent a bit of time this past couple of weeks pursuing almond blossom photography in Andalucia and I want to share some of my lessons learned. The almond in Spain is a gnarly twisted tree, brutally pruned to enable harvesting. It’s hard wood great for burning, I feel the tree gets a raw deal…
Switching genres in Photography is not quite as simple as you might hope. In this post, I’m going to talk about the importance of being open to learning, retaining objectivity about your own skill levels as a photographer and the importance of being open to learning entirely new skills. Switching genres is a great way…
This post takes us through the steps required to get perfectly sharp landscape photographs from front to back and side to side. I’ve been using various techniques, including focus stacking in Photoshop, increasingly in my landscape photography. Always with the same goal. To create an image that is sharp where I need it to be…