Month: January 2014
Photographing the Landscape When It Really Isn’t Your Thing
Anyone who follows my blog knows that I am not really a landscape photographer. I like to see the man made element in my work, and in front of me when I am taking photos. That doesn’t mean that I can’t take landscape images, just that it is not my subject of choice. Quite a few years ago I went away with a friend to the Grampians, for those that don’t know, the Grampians are a National Park and very mountainous. During this weekend away I was supposed to be getting photos, we drove around and around, but I didn’t get any photos because I didn’t want to photograph anything. I thought it was beautiful, but was not the type of subject that I really wanted to photograph. There are times when you don’t have a choice and you just have to do it. I was asked recently to… | Read the full article
Photography as Art
Is all photography art, or is only some of it art? Are we photographers or artists? Are some of us photographers and some of us artists? How do you know which is which? Interesting questions, and something I’ve been trying to work out for some time. I tried to do a post on it last year, but I don’t think I thought about properly and I was slammed for it. No one seemed to understand what I was trying to get at. People thought I was putting photography down and implying that art was more superior, which I don’t think at all, I just feel that they are different. Recently I saw an online program from Joel Grimes and he talked about how he considers himself an artist and not a photographer. That while he uses the medium of photography, he is an artist. When I saw this I decided… | Read the full article
Hot/Cold Timetables
When my children were in Primary School they had what they called hot day timetables or wet day timetables. These were contingency plans for when the children couldn’t play as normal. I thought it would be a great idea to explore this option for photographers as I had a comment from a new blogging friend who told me she was getting too depressed from being trapped inside in the extreme weather that the Northern Hemisphere has been experiencing. I understood it when I got it because I realised that it would be us in Southern Australia being stuck inside trying to stay cool that would be getting depressed because we couldn’t really get out and take photos. I thought this would be a great time to take a look at what you can do when you can’t get outside to take photos. There are options, many of them really, not all… | Read the full article
Is Imitation the Best Form of Flattery?
Happy New Year everyone, hopefully you all had a great time over the break and are ready to get stuck into the year ahead. Back in November I did a post on Finding What Inspires You, I talked about many different ways to find inspiration, and one of the ways that artists are taught to find it is to look at the work of others. We try to get inspired from what others are doing and see if we can put some of that into our own work. When I was at art school we were encouraged to copy the work of others and try to do exactly what they did, so we could learn. I did some of that, though much of what I did never came off as well as the masters. It was a great way to learn. One lecturer used to say it to us… | Read the full article
