The question is: How does a photographer think? I do not know how everyone else thinks, but I can tell you my process.
Go where you are familiar
First, I consider my location. Where do I want to go? Do I want to return to a place first I have worked before? In my experience, re -looking at the same place has great qualities, because a new place rarely reveals all its secrets in the first journey – like making a new friend. To quote Georgia O’Cafe, “… in a way – no one sees a flower – really – it’s too short – we have not given time – and to see that it takes time for a friend.” Only after several trips – and sometimes very hard work – do we find the details that make a place unique. I seek those details.
I had gone to the region dozens of times and this meadow was not found with such beautiful early spring plants. There was a grove of small aspense at a short distance, whose buds started emerging. Then the challenge was to show the same material in a different way, so I did not make the same picture repeatedly -just just different materials.
These small aspects were directly upwards from the previous subject. Never be satisfied with just one image of an area. Look around for more! I often do not use color in my work, but it felt like a moment when a soft greens were to be shown.
Find a new place
There is also a lot of knowledge in detecting new areas and committing yourself to see new things. Doing a lot of time will help brush the cobway and will be forced to see things in a new way. When I was teaching, my students had to find one of my favorite assignments to find a thing that was quite complex and then to find a way to take a way to take a photo of 24 or 36 different ways -24 or 36 completely to make different images, and only to show the whole image. I usually had the same assignment that I handed over to my students. I will present their images with them, and I will be criticized by them, and without mercy. That single practice forced me to grow my vision, and the bleed-over was that when I went to a new place, it trained me to see and really to see what I was painting.
What will you add to the amount of photographic literature that is not said in the same way you have said it? I am certainly a non -non -renovative – at least I aspire to happen. Therefore, with her, how do I see this material that I have different than before, and the big question is how I portray it in a way that is unique and interestingly different from thousands of identical images? For that reason, I avoid photographic hot spots. For example, Arcas National Park ignored Arc, or Yosemite where Adams created an immortal image, or chapel in Hernandez, New Mexico. Find your own voice, and sing your own song! If I go to a place and what I see is the deryres of a hundred shutter poppers, then I don’t go there – no interest.
Perhaps I can’t show it completely contrary to everyone. But the worst, I can make my own separate. It is more interesting to add a unique turn. Here is an image created in a very high-travel area-now, it was not at that time-that, I think, gives a unique twist in an area that is completely finished with photographers and photo-vanbase. Everyone in the group was looking up, and I was looking for the pattern in the floor.
When should you go, time is everything!
Next, consider the time of year, or weather, you want to stay there. When the aspects are in full color, there are many times to be in the mountains. In fact, other seasons may be beautiful as falling, and even more expressive.
In this image, “Frozen Lake Mary”, I was going to Montana to teach a workshop in film photography for photographers formula. This is an enough drive from my house, and I knew that even the most direct route could take me through the drug bow and was right in front of this small lake that I had become familiar during many years. In addition, it was very early spring, and I knew that the lake, Mary Lake, maybe still be frozen. As it happened, the snow started coming out, and a huge mountain was faced with a late winter snow storm, so everything worked about it. In addition, on that trip, I learned about the conservation of a wild horse that my wife and I would visit the following decline – which is one of the great memories of my life.
Be patient, this is not Detona 500!
Next, take your time. The old saying is “Rome was not built in a day” is true. It will take time to do anything of importance. If I had chosen to fly to Kalispel, Montana – since it used to be very fast – this meant that I would not have seen Lake Mary when it was frozen, nor experienced the position of nearby whiteouts, which I had dropped the mountain down to spend the night in Savtoga, Vyoming. take time. Exercise patience. We all have seen the man with a brand -nine canonicosney camera that moves up and down on the hill with his motor drive (I know that digital cameras do not drive a motor drive like my old canon F -1, but you get an idea) Create 500 images a day that all look the same. Take time to find that one description, or that one approach, and create a picture. My background is in film photography, and I am using big cameras like I am using two or three photos a day, which has uniqueness and beauty, was the whole day’s work. It was extraordinary to get five or six. In my view, thinking about your photography is very reverse how many images you can get in a day time. So, take your time. This is not a timely phenomenon.
When I created this image, on the northern coast of Holland Lake, Montana, I was moving towards Holland Falls, just looking for interesting materials and no one was looking for. It was raining throughout the day-sometimes a drizzle, sometimes fog, and sometimes a full-ed stranger. I stopped for a few minutes under a huge cedar tree. I was looking at the mountain on the isthus and thinking, “Wouldn’t it be amazing if the clouds settled around the mountain in the background, to separate the land of the land from the mountains behind it?” Just in a minute, it did it right. And Good Fortune caused a temperature stratification to lend an element of interest to the water, a clever place on the surface of the water. If I were in a hurry, I would remember this moment when everything happened together.
Look for patterns that are interesting
I look for patterns and forms that I can use to make a picture. Many times, the image that is created will be an extract of the view as a whole. I want to find forms and shapes that are interesting and tell a story, but not the whole story.
One of the funny things that was not so funny at that time. I was holding camp at a very good place for two nights, in which there was no neighbor. Late evening, before night, a tour group went inside. They were not humble people – loud, unpleasant, vocal, etc. everything that you do not want in the neighbor. I had gone up well before sunrise and went to one place which I wanted to portray. Walking back, I saw the form, and there was a man who stood saying that he found nothing for the picture. I saw this and started installing my tripod, thrown out my camera – all things we have to do. As soon as I started loading the film, he started walking right through my composition. I stopped him, of course. One thing I can say is that we should do when we go out. See for the size, pattern, the way light falls on a subject. Find a way to portray it and make it interesting and unique.
There will be times when a composition will present itself such as accident. However, the circumstances always favor the prepared. Ansel Adams once commented that “it seemed that God had placed him in a place when he needed someone to open the shutter.” And in fact, I will driving frequently, and I start looking at something extraordinary in the scenario. So always try to keep a camera nearby. The image of the head of this article is an example. We were going out to stay on a thanksgiving holiday with our son and his family in the Phoenix region and decided to take a break in the rocks of rocks in southern New Mexico as we were ahead of the schedule for our arrival. When I walked a short distance from my truck, I saw that there was a sunny dog and it was a standing rock. I grabbed my camera and a trippai and went to a place where Sun Dog would appear as a halo around the rock. Thus, title: “Madonna Stone, City of Rocks.”
Sometimes, sometimes an interesting image will present itself. However, most often they are the result of careful plan to place themselves at the right place at the right time. As an image manufacturer you are one of the most beneficial things that have to think forward and make further plans to be in the right place at the right time. Find out where you usually want to live, and avoid overdone, clichthe locations. I, personally, do not want to live in a place where there is an argument with a group of cameras, with the most pixel count in the new camera model, the lens is the fastest, and Lord, please help me – about which the lens is the best bokeh. I am zero interest in those things. I want to talk about art and which places in the city have the best green chili burgers.
When you reach the right place at the right time, try to clean your mind prior perceptions. Try to see something that you have never seen before, or look at it in a new way, with new eyes. Most of all, go out of that sheet metal, fiberglass and window-glass-sighted coffin, and go for a walk. Take your camera with you, walk slowly, and watch carefully. You never know what will pop out and surprise you.
I leave you with the image above. About 10 miles away from a lot of shock sand and no water. Doesn’t you try to stick or bite you will try to kill you and eat you. The southwest desert is a difficult, unforgivable mistress. But it is beautiful and mysterious beyond the remedy. Is a great life.
