(as replied to ruskin)
Yo man!
Do you mind to post what you sent me on my photography thread? then I reply on it and we can have a discussion there + got lots of input, could grow into something great!
Anyways, I wrote a long reply yesterday, then something went wrong and bang its gone, so now im re writing it, so if its frank and short please excuse!
Photography the way I see it
1 break all the rules, do whatever you want to do the most and feel like the most. Don’t hesitate to defy logic and go crazy
2 get stoned
3 find what inspires you the most and focus on it
4 try experimenting more with shooting techniques, such as alternate shutter speeds and perhaps blending more than one image of the same thing at different shutters over each other with a double exposure for example… try crossprocessing (e6 film processed c41 instead of 16),
5 experiment with lighting and exposure and color some more, you’ve got talent and should keep focusing on it, you’ve got a very good eye, composition and rythym is great! But you should try expirmenting with color and tonalities / lighting some more, that’s your flaw… when you see something you want to photograph, look at it closely and picture what it’ll look like on a photo. Now ask yourself, will this look better, or will it look better if I change the lighting somehow? For example, the photo of the slingy tunnel thing in the tree is fantastic, well done, but I believe that you should’ve tried to photograph it slightly differently. At a different time of day perhaps, under different lighting conditions.
How I get around that a lot of the time is night time photography. A lot of my stuff is like 30second plus exposures purely cos at night you get that beautifull shade of dark blue and purple on everything, everything starts complimenting each other and forms a delicate rythym no matter how contrasty their colours may be at day. If you have a car nearby you can flash the lights of the car onto the subject, it’ll expose and create interesting shapes and patterns on the subject… so look at that exact same photo, now imagine it at night with the shades of night, a slight motion blur left and right around the trees shape of the same night soft colour with these discs flashing into existence in front of you (car hard lights) but that fade out softly somehow (self exposure without car) and maybe even the stars behind it all… If with that photo you wanted to go for contrast, then push it more!!! Shoot it at a time of day, ugh sitting at an internet café the oke next to me is watchin the most disgusting porn and as I notice whats not directly in front of me too having trained my eyes.. uuughgh, blegh, anyways, where was I? Oh yah, that photo of slinky if you wanted contrast a good way to shoot it may have been with the sun directly behind it, silhouetted.
My motto is go for extremities. Don’t bother with the middle ground. Go for soft and subtle, or go for hard hitting grite, or whatever.
Its great that your starting to experiment with the medium a bit, but PUSH IT!! Go CRAAZZYYYYYY!!! And do everything you want to but think is probably a bad idea!!! And if you get disappointed in the end result, that’s good too because you learn from it! You learn with every shoot something new. It took me a couple of rolls of film to get the night time photography right (cos you cant use your light meter at night, it doesn’t give accurate readings as it stops at 30sec exposure at wide open app) but eventually I did it!!!
Lastly, you’ve got to develop your taste. Developing your skill as a photographer is all about developing your visual taste. Once you know what you want, knowing how to get it is easy…. Find something that inspires you, and go for it over and over again
J