Ibarionex Profiled on the Adobe Lightroom Homepage
Bits of Wisdom from Jay Maisel
I have the opportunity to interview Jay some years ago. Here is a link to the interview. Even if you have heard it before, it's worth listening to it again.
Here are some pearls of wisdom from one of my favorite photographers.
"Always carry your camera; it's easier to take picture that way."
"Shape is is the enemy of color."
"Here are three words for being a better photographer: 'Move your ass'"
"You only have two influences on the look of your photography: when you shoot and where you're shooting from."
"I don't believe as the dictionary says that gesture just has to do with the movement of arms and faces and legs. I believe that gesture is involved in everything we photograph. We've all photographed gesture all our live. We just have not always been aware of it."
"Anything you do to make your image more specific, helps to make the photograph more powerful."
"Gesture will always reveal narrative, which light and color alone find it difficult to do. Gesture can tell a story."
"You cannot put your lettering in your pictures, unless you want it to be the content of your image."
"The most effective use of a pattern is when it becomes interrupted and there's a payoff in the end. Otherwise, it gets to be like wallpaper."
"You don't want to be a one-trick pony. You don't want to keep repeating yourself."
"If you can keep the element of surprise in your photography, you've already won the viewer half over."
"There is joy in ambiguity."
"There are going to be situations where you can't get yourself out of the picture. So, make yourself a part of the picture."
"I never saw light as something that casually fell on something in my picture, but rather as an integral something in my picture, like a solid object."
Smugs in San Francisco Tomorrow Night
The description of the presentation is as follows: Vision, Light and Refinement - three things that are key if you are interested from creating individual photographs to developing a body of work. Master Photographer, teacher, author and podcast host Ibarionex Perello will share his own journey as a photographer and how developing a deep understanding and appreciation of light helped him refine his approach to photography and create his vision. Additionally, Ibarionex will discuss how the editing process is crucial to fulfilling on that vision and truly developing a creative voice. If you are in the Bay Area tomorrow, please sign up and join us.
For more information and to register for the event click here.
Look for Pictures That Other People Don't Make
"Look for pictures that other people don't make."
It's a simple statement, but one that is full of insight.
I was thinking just along these lines when during this past weekend I had some students in my Digital SLR Bootcamp make pictures of a bandshell in the park where I teach the workshop. I encouraged them to not only make photographs from eye level, but to really play around and try different perspectives, focal lengths and compositions. I asked them not to settle for just one or two photographs, but to fully exhaust all the possibilities.
Some of the resulting photographs really surprised me. I saw in their pictures perspectives and points of view that I had never seen myself, even though it's a location that I have visited countless numbers of times. In their photographs, these students were really revealing to me the limits of my own vision.
I know what makes a good photograph or at least I think I know most of the time. So, when I photograph a scene or a subject, it's easy to compose a shot thinking that this is the definitive interpretation of it. But is that really the only possibility?
I saw photographers taking risks, making choices that they were not sure would work or not, but still committing to making the photograph. Yes, there was a risk that the image might not work, but that didn't deter them from trying it out and seeing what could happen. They weren't editing themselves and judging the picture before they made it. Instead, they practiced photography and played and discovered what worked and what didn't and in several cases, revealed exciting and beautiful surprises.
Ask 10 photographers to photograph a car and likely 9 out of 10 of them will deliver just that. They will make a picture of a car. It results in a photograph that is nothing more than a document. Then there is the one photographer who makes a photograph not of the car, but the qualities of the car that resonate with him or her. It could be the color, the shapes, the play off light off its surface. These photographers use the camera to create from not only what they see, but what they feel.
It's so easy to compose a photograph by following all the rules. Yes, it can produce a well-composed, well-exposed photograph, but it may not surprise me or anyone else. It may not make me feel anything. It won't reveal the world to me in a different way that's both exciting and liberating.
The best photographers do that and it begins when they make photographs that other people aren't making.
It's about photographing the world that expresses not only how I uniquely see it, but also which reveals my exploration of that world when I make non-traditional choices with the camera. When I am willing to take the risk and do something different, even though there is a possibility that it may not work, is whenI am really living in the spirit of what it means to be a photographer.
Video Tutorial - How to Adjust White Balance
Color accuracy is very important to digital photography and it revolves around our ability to get the white balance right. In this video, Ibarionex demonstrates how he considers white balance and how he uses Adobe Lightroom to achieve the best color accuracy.
Chasing the Light Video Tutorials
In each episode I utilized images submitted by members of the Chasing the Light Flickr pool to illustrate those points as well as provide an opportunity to critique the effectiveness of each image. All 10 episodes are available at the Peachpit website.
Click here to see the videos.
If you are in the United States, you can download the episodes via iTunes. Otherwise, look for episodes in the iTunes store in your respective country.
I plan to feature similar videos in the near future based on a series of mini-critiques of 3 images from photographers who contribute to The Candid Frame Flickr pool. So, if you want to be considered for this in the future, please sign up and join the growing community of photographers.
Let me know what you liked about these video and what you would like to see more of in the near future.
The Candid Frame #143 - Rinzi Ruiz
Rinzi Ruiz recommends the work of Dana Barsuhn.
