The Photographer's Muse

Welcome to The Photographer's Muse, a compendium of ideas, concepts and exercises designed to help you find your creative potential.  I'll post a new exercise every week and I encourage you to try them out and if you are happy with the results you can post them to my Facebook page. 

But before you get started, and to help with the process, I suggest you approach these exercises playfully and with a clear and open mind, with mindful attention and relaxed awareness.  Approach your subject quietly and with reverence.

So, let's get started!

The Photographer's Muse for February 20, 2012:  Travel Without Leaving Home

Many of you may be contemplating going south, getting away from this winter. These next few Muse articles, which you can practice at home,  are designed to help you make the most out of the images you make while away.

 Remember the Muse article about photographing the usual, unusually?  Well this first exercise is along the same lines.  We all too often feel that if we could only travel to some far off exotic place, our pictures would miraculously improve.  While the subject matter would certainly be different and interesting, how we approach the subject remains the same.

 So try this:  Think globally, shoot locally.  Explore ways in which you can photograph, what you might consider ordinary, in an extraordinary way.  Find ways to make images of subjects that which you see every day and make those images interesting.  

 How do you do this?  You must simply sharpen your observational skills.  Take the approach that you are going to photograph your backyard, your neighbourhood like you have never photographed it before.  

 Approach the subject with a child-like curiosity, like you have just landed on this planet for the first time, like you have never seen these subjects before.  

 Produce a series of 10 to 15 images that really show your locale like it has never been seen before.

If you are happy with your results, click on the icon above and post to my Facebook page.

Good luck!

The Photographer's Muse For September 26, 2011:  The Pigment of Your Imagination

Fall presents photographers with some fantastic opportunities, but one can all too easily become overwhelmed.   So try this:

Produce a series of photographs (five to eight) where colour is the subject.  Forget for a moment that you are shooting foliage, or golden grasses or a forest.  In other words don't lablel the subject and just make colour the primary subject.  

You might find it helpful to ask yourself questions like:                                                 What colour is this street?                                                                                           What is the dominant colour in this scene?

And then shoot that colour, again forgetting what the subject is.  Get in tight if you need to isolate a colour.  Try to fill the frame with just one or two colours if you can.

Once you start to reduce the number of elements and the number of colours in a scene, the images you produce will automatically appear more colourful.

The Photographer's Muse for July 26, 2011

It’s interesting isn’t it, the terms we use when we are taking pictures. 

There’s one right there, “taking” pictures.  The implication is that we are stealing something.  We “point, and then shoot” as if we are hunters.  One only need think of the paparazzi and the word stalk comes to mind.

Susan Sontag in “On Photography,” wrote;  “To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed.  It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge - and, therefore, like power.”

So the question I have for you today is, can you make a picture instead of take a picture?  Can you become part of the subject instead of standing outside the subject?  Can you share in the beauty of the subject rather than steal the image?  Can you set your ego aside, your need for power and your need to produce a great photograph and just let the image, whatever it is, come to you.  In The Zen of Photography, Paul Lester wrote;  “There are three phases to awareness:  to look, to see, and to perceive.  A camera looks.  A mind sees.  A heart perceives.”

This week’s Muse exercise is to see with your heart.  Be still, be quiet and let your heart take over.  Photograph what comes to you and be happy with whatever you realize as an image.

The Photographer’s Muse for May 27, 2011:  The Usual Seen Unusually.

Beaumont Newhall was a prominent photography historian, in addition to being an artist and photographer in his own right.  Among his many accomplishments, Newhall authored many books and articles before his death in 1993 at the age of 85.  Through his viewfinder, we were encouraged to see the world differently.  Here’s one of my favourite Newhall quotes:

“We are not interested in the unusual, but in the usual seen unusually.”

So, this week’s exercise from the Photographer’s Muse is to do precisely that - create a new vision of an ordinary subject.  That is, shoot the usual, unusually. 

And just how do you do that?  Well “The Usual” part is easy enough.  Choose a subject that you have shot before or you see everyday or you would like to photograph and haven’t gotten around to it. 

Now for the “Unusual.”  We’re accustomed to seeing subjects with a preconceived idea of how they should look and that is generally how we approach them when we want to photograph that subject.  This week’s challenge is to change your approach.  In doing so, you will change your results. 

Here’s some things to try:
    Choose an unusual, even contrived camera angle or vantage point.
    Alter the focus  Focus on a part of the subject that you would normally choose to     be out focus.
    Use a lens you would normally not use for that subject.
    If the subject is normally photographed moving, shoot it still and vice versa.
    Move while shooting.  Jump up and down, spin around, lie on your back.
    Zoom the lens in or out while shooting.
   
The ultimate goal here is to see the ordinary in a different way.

Good luck and when you are done, upload it to my Facebook page so others can see  the world a little differently.

The Photographer's Muse for May 24, 2011

This week’s exercise requires you to interpret your favourite poem, photographically.  Someone once said, “When I read a poem I learn more about myself than I do the poet.”  Well this certainly holds true when you illustrate a poem.

So, where to start?  Try answering these questions photographically:  “What does this poem mean to you?”  What feelings does it stir up in me?”  What do those words remind me of?”

The American poet Robert Frost has been a favourite of mine for a very long time, most likely because his depictions of rural life remind me of my youth growing up on the farm.  “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” is the one poem I go back to over and over. 

Here’s the poem and my photographic interpretation.  When you have completed the assignment, you can upload it to my Facebook page.  Good luck!

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
By Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.  
His house is in the village though;  
He will not see me stopping here  
To watch his woods fill up with snow.  

My little horse must think it queer  
To stop without a farmhouse near  
Between the woods and frozen lake  
The darkest evening of the year.  

He gives his harness bells a shake  
To ask if there is some mistake.  
The only other sound’s the sweep  
Of easy wind and downy flake.  

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.  


But I have promises to keep,  
And miles to go before I sleep,  
And miles to go before I sleep.

The Photographer's Muse for May 14, 2011

This week find a subject that is of interest to you and isolate part of it.  So rather than making an image that documents or is a true representation of the subject in its entirety, find a detail and explore that detail. Look for pieces of the subject that may, or may not, give you a clue to the identity of the larger subject.  Explore.  Get in close.  Isolate.

This is a grain silo along the St. Lawrence River, or rather a detail of a silo.  These silos are magnificently huge and imposing and I took lots of shots of them looming large against the sky, but the images that interested me the most are those details or fragments of the larger subject.

If you are happy with your results, click on the icon at the top and post your favourite image to my Facebook page