Seven Steps Toward Becoming A More Creative Photographer

I think I agree with everything Scott Bourne has to say in this short but insightful post. The fact is that being creative cannot be restricted to one medium, it is part of everything that makes you want to take pictures, this the Scott’s opening

“In this post I am going to lay the ground work for a road map of sorts. It’s really just a random stream of ideas designed to help you navigate that most difficult of journeys – the one to creativity. I’ve made several attempts at this here on Photofocus. This is just another in what will be a string of many. Hopefully this one resonates with someone. These aren’t rules. They are simply guidelines and have personally benefitted me and my work. My hope is that they will help you too.” here is more

20 Things I Learned About Photography

This list is by scottbourne over at Photo Focus, here are the first 5, I can’t disagree with any of them, if you want more go here

1. Know your subject better than you know yourself. Your photos will sing if you can do that.

2. Background – background – background. Pay close attention to the background. Keep it simple. Make sure there are no background distractions. Make the subject the star of the photo not the background.

3. Get closer. Then get closer still. You need to be close enough to your subject to feel their heartbeat and close enough so they can feel yours.

4. When you are new at photography, spend significant time looking at the work of master photographers. Looking at good pictures will make you a good photographer.

5. Know your camera inside and out. Know every feature and button so that when the defining moment occurs, you won’t be wondering how to catch it.

©Keith Barnes

Enhance your pictures, make them tell stories

Making photographs has many purposes, for many people an image is just a decorative artifact but most photographers want more than decoration or even mere representation of a scene. You often hear photographers talking about how they like their images to tell stories, sometimes these are obvious, sometimes obscure and the story is in your head, just prompted by the image. Any picture that keeps you thinking longer is better than one that you think is nice and forget about immediately, most sunset pictures fall into this latter category in my opinion.

This article by scottbourne helps to set out some basics in making images that tell stories, as he says it is not definitive but I think the article touches on the necessary elements that you need to start telling stories with your pictures.

Here is that article

KGB