Hello ,
I think that curiosity and a good sense of form
are the top two things to have if we're going to be good photographers.
And if we don't have them, we can cultivate them through our studies and practice.
Curiosity
They say curiosity killed the cat. I don't buy that.
Especially since it's my experience that curiosity only makes us prolific and better photographers.
And that's because it's our curiosity that makes us want to learn and know something.
Great photographers are curious about the world, life, and people, so they want to know more about them.
We want to know about camera operation, and we want to know how to make the best picture we can of the thing that got our curiosity.
But if we're going to make a picture of something that got our attention, we've got to be curious enough to learn more about it to make the best composition possible. On a base level, we've got to at least know enough about its characteristics as a light source.
Sometimes, if it's a person we photograph, talking with them could be helpful too.
An Exact Sense Of Form
When we photograph a three-dimensional form, we make a two-dimensional representation of it.
We can consider form as visible shapes or an arrangement of parts.
As photographers, we tend to
create visual order in what we see. I'd call this our way of seeing.
And when what we see gets our attention and makes us curious about photographing it, we compose a picture. And the picture we make is the two-dimensional creation that we feel best represents how we think about the three-dimensional forms we see.
In other words, we arrange the three-dimensional forms we see within the frame of our picture and bring two-dimensional structure to our photograph in our compositions.
Form is in everything we see and every part of our picture.
We could say that our photograph is the arrangement of forms within the form of the frame of
our photographs.
And remember, we learn and become better by doing, so make sure to practice by making at least one picture today.
That’s all for now; thanks for reading!
Sam
Oh! I just stocked the class cupboard with a bunch of new class dates.
Study and practice photography with
me.
And if the timing doesn't work for you in any of my scheduled group classes, we can schedule a one-time lesson or a series of in-person or online one-on-one private instruction that cover the same things as any of my group
classes.
Ways to learn with me are below.
