Art and Photography

It is easy to pick up a digital camera, start shooting away and call yourself a photographer.  It is difficult to spend hours studying and failing over and over, trying not until you get it right, but until you can’t get it wrong.

There are so many new photographers hitting the scene, taking snapshots and calling them photojournalist.  Most of our clients will need our help; they will need direction to make the image magic. It is very rare that a subject will walk into the perfect light, turn around and strike the most stunning pose you have ever saw. A little direction can go along way, please take the time to learn how to help them.  If we take the easy road, the artistic imagery will soon disappear.

Don’t get me wrong photojournalism is a difficult style of photography and when it is perfected it can deliver some of the most stunning imagery you could imagine.  But the key word is “right”; when it’s done right, it is amazing.  When it’s done wrong, it is atrocious, and I believe it takes away from the art that is photography.

It seems to me that so few people understand the art of photography.  It is art you know.  The only different between a painter and a photographer is this.  A painter has a small empty canvas; photographers have an immensely large canvas that is already cluttered and full.  A photographer has to pick a certain part of that full and cluttered canvas that is visually appealing.  It is not an easy task, and certainly not something a camera knows how to do.  A camera can only do what it’s told.  It is nothing more than a tool, like a hammer to a carpenter or a scalpel to a surgeon.  To make a photograph you need more than a tool, you need knowledge, and imagination.

Many unseen elements separate a photograph from a snapshot.  Composition, lighting, subject, posing, balance… You must decide what elements are to be included in each image you make.  If you do not pay attention and just snap away, you will never truly understand the art of photography.  Take the time to study paintings, and other photographs, compare them with the world around you.  What makes them the same, what makes them different?  What makes them beautiful, what makes them sensual, what make them visually appealing?  Once you understand this, you will see the world differently. You will start to look for composition in movies, while you walk down the street, while you take a road trip; and you will find it.  Then your imagery will start to grow, it will seem to grow by itself.  This power is in all of us, just waiting to be unleashed.

Believing in yourself is the most important thing you can do, because if you believe in yourself, so will others.  The only thing you have to do is open your eyes, and your imagination, let go of the boundaries society has placed on us, in truth they are not there, boundaries are but illusions.

Travis Hill