Moving From Techy To Artsy # 1

So, you have been photographing for a while, you have some adequate equipment, you can make competent snap shots, but your images lack a certain something - well actually several somethings. What to do now?

Pick a well known photographer who's work you like and see what you can learn about his photography and how you could go about emulating him or her. This might mean a trip to the library, it could be internet searches, checking indexes for magazines.

You want to know how he does it. Don't worry about his equipment, equipment only determines the size of the print you can make, not the quality of the image so if you aren't greedy, you can make faboulous images with any old camera, film or digital.

What you do want to know is where does he get his subject matter, is there a time of day he likes to photograph, is there a certain style to his prints - light, dark, moody, contrasty, whatever. Study the type of images he shoots and that you particularly admire. Is there a favourite focal length, does he shoot things at infinity, middle distance or up close, or does he work on the near far type image.

If you have a choice between going to the exotic places he shoots or choosing a local city park at the same time of day and light he shoots in, pick the time and lighting every time. You are far more likely to get a good image in the city park at 5 am than you are near the top of the mountain, hanging from a cliff at noon. Several of my landscape images have been taken within the city (Calgary is 1 million pop.).

SO you try to emulate your selected photographer. You shoot for a few months and you make the best darn portfolio of 10 or more images that you possibly can - and now it's time to find out how you performed.

Take your 10 images and compare them to 10 from your selected successful photographer. Compare images that are as similar as possible.

Chances are you are going to like his images a lot more than yours - but it's the why that counts here.

You are looking for:

a) the overall tone of the prints - ignoring subject content and composition, are your prints as rich as his (be sure you are comparing small prints so techincal quality isn't a major component of the comparison - chances are you are looking at his in a book anyway.

b) shadow detail

c) subtlety of highights

d) composition - how well did you place the important parts of the subject compared to your guru.

e) lighting - did you time it as well as your hero - perhaps you slept in a bit late or got lazy.

f) subject matter - don't worry about how exciting it is, that could have to do with location more than skill - look rather to how well it is displayed - is it shown in the optimum way - this could be a matter of an uncluttered background or selective focus

g) does the expert's image say something to you that your images don't and if so why and how could you change your images to speak as clearly.

For example, lets say that you shoot industrial and that your idol is David Plowman, so you go out shooting for several weeks and you put together a set of your strongest 10 images. You print them small, say 5X7 on 8X10 paper - perhaps you even crop to emulate his use of medium format square images most of the time. David's industrial images are elegently simple - not a lot of clutter - are your images as clean? They are as strongly composed - check the balance, the use of foreground and background, does it show the subject as well as his images. Most of his images are shot on cloudy days and with soft lighting then the contrast is increased to make rich prints - rather than the more typical hobbyist approach which is to shoot on a sunny day then spend hours trying to rescue the shadows and highlights. When David shoots a ship, it really says ship - it's a clear message - is your message clear?

Next time I will discuss what do do once you have done this comparison.