Last Sunday I posted a photograph on the blog, and in The Contact Sheet email, inviting you to consider how I made one of my photographs. The exercise was a simple one, and I know some of you have seen it before but you can still learn from it. Look at the image and ask yourself what decisions I made to get the final photograph. What lens might I have used, what point of view, what settings, even what changes I might have made in development. I promised I’d walk you through it from my perspective and the video below does that. This video is also episode 1 from my ImageWork course which opens again for purchase/enrollment this Sunday.

I’ve had some really great feedback from many of you about the videos I’ve been putting out lately and if you liked them I think you’re going to love this series.

This coming Sunday (assuming you’re a subscriber to my emails) I’ll send you more details about the remaining 17 video lessons that make up the ImageWork course and introduce you to the bonus resources. This is the best valued course I’ve made to date, and I think probably the best-reviewed. I hope you’ll give it your consideration when I show you all the details this Sunday.

Oh! One last thing – I promised I’d draw a random winner from those who participated in the discussion about the image on the last post. The prize is a full enrollment in ImageWork (and ImageStory, too, but more on that later) and that winner is Steve Carey. I’ll be reaching out to enroll Steve in the both ImageWork and ImageStory on Sunday. 

Questions? I’d love to hear from you.

For the Love of the Photograph,
David

As a child, my cousin James had a reputation for taking things apart. I recall one Christmas when he dismantled down to the wiring every gift he was given. Remote-control cars? Give him 20 minutes, and there would be nothing left but a pile of tiny screws, little motors, and the tears of his mother who probably should have known better than to give him such an expensive present.

But the extraordinary thing is, he learned to put them back together again, and it didn’t surprise any of us when he became one of those people who could rebuild or fix anything as an adult.

Taking things apart and figuring out why they work is probably one of the best ways to learn something, and while I don’t recommend it with your cameras since there’s a certain amount of trial and error involved, it’s probably the most powerful way to learn to make photographs.

I was told that the best way to learn to make photographs is to make a lot of them, and that’s impossible to argue with. But I made thousands of photographs for years before they became good photographs. One of the things that turned it around for me was a simple exercise. Now a habit, it’s simple, can be done anywhere, and will change the way you look at—and make—photographs.

Take them apart. Layer by layer, strip them down. And as you do, ask yourself this one big question:

What makes the image work? Maybe you don’t think it works, but you can still ask: what makes it look the way it does?

It’s simple reverse engineering (though not always easy). Begin by just looking at an image for a bit. Let your eyes wander the frame. Be aware of what you think or feel. Are there hidden surprises the longer you look? Most images can’t be fully enjoyed with the kind of quick glance we give them. Where does your eye go? What’s it about?

Now ask what decisions the photographer made that lead to it looking like this? Did the shutter speed contribute anything to the image? What about the chosen aperture or where the focus was placed? Did the overall choice of exposure, either brighter or darker, make the image feel a certain way? Where was the camera when the image was made? Does that contribute something? Can you tell which kind of focal length was used? What does that choice add to the image?

Just a few simple questions, but asking them can help us become more visually literate. And the more deeply you go with it, the more you’ll learn. Now ask why: Why did the photographer make those choices and not others? Sometimes they won’t matter; sometimes it’s one big decision that makes the image work. Other times it’s a combination of choices without which the photograph would fall apart.

And you can do this with darkroom work too, though there is a bit more guesswork involved. What do you think the photographer might have chosen to do with brightness or contrast? Is it bright or dark? High contrast or low? What about saturation or the way the colours work? If it’s black and white, why do you think that decision was made? Do you think it would be as powerful in colour? Where does your eye go in the frame?

I want to try an interactive exercise with you, and there’s a $400 prize on the line.

I’m going to show you one of my photographs, and for the darkroom portion, I’ll make it easier by showing you what my RAW file looks like. You can choose to do the exercise on your own, or you can play along with the rest of us in the comments below, where you can leave your answers and look at the answers of others.

I’ll play as well, and on Wednesday, I’ll post a link to a video of me unpacking the image from start to finish. And to give you a little motivation, I’ll put a prize on the line and draw the name of one person who plays along to give it to. I’ll tell you more about that on Wednesday.

Here’s that image, both before and after:

So, what choices made this image look the way it does?

What decisions both in-camera and in the digital darkroom do you think I made? Guesses are fine. But for each of them, because there’s no magic in specific shutter speeds or focal lengths, the big question remains: Why did I choose that? What does that choice accomplish?

What effect does it have in the image? How would the image be different if I’d made a different choice about shutter speed or aperture, focal length, or my point of view (where I put the camera)? What if I’d used the light differently? What about the darkroom? Can you tell which overall changes I made? Don’t worry about how for now. Is it brighter? More contrast? Saturation? And if so, did I change the saturation everywhere? What about dodging and burning, can you see how I might have gently nudged your eye away from some elements in order to draw it toward others?

I’m going somewhere with this, and on Wednesday, I’ll send you that video I promised and talk more about how this approach can forever change your photography as it has done for me. For now, take a look at the images, and if you want to play along, leave your own thoughts and answers to these questions in the comments below. The winner will be chosen randomly and it’s just for fun, but the prize is a good one—it’s worth about $400. Just be sure to reply before Wednesday because that’s when I’ll announce the winner and the prize.

The best thing about this is there are no secrets. Every image in the world is there to be unpacked and learned from, and I want to teach you how to do that because if you can learn to do it with the photographs of others, you can learn to make those decisions and understand the effect of them when you’re holding your camera and making your own photographs.

See you on Wednesday!

For the Love of the Photograph,
David

Being able to dissect an image is a helpful skill. Looking at a photograph and identifying the various choices that led to the look and feel of that image, even when it’s your own (maybe especially when it’s your own) makes us stronger photographers that are more fluent in the visual language.

I’ve been talking a lot lately about the choices we make, and how our photographs are a result of the combinations of all those choices and what they contribute to the image. I though perhaps walking you through some of my photographs, beginning with this one, might be helpful (even if you never photograph giraffes).

The video below is about 17 minutes long and walks through my in-camera and development decisions in the making of a photograph from Kenya back in January. I thought video might just be a better medium for this than writing it all out. I hope it’s helpful to you.

Questions? Leave them in the comments. There’s a wonderfully thoughtful community of photographers that gather here every couple of weeks and the comments are often as helpful as my own contributions, so even if you’ve got nothing to add, don’t miss the comments below.

Thanks, as always, for being here. Do me a favour? If you find my writing or my teaching valuable, would you take a moment to tell other photographers in your life? This is my life’s work and it means the world to me but it’s the people that make it possible (and so rewarding). Please feel free to share my articles and videos in any way that makes sense to you. Just point people to my blog here at davidduchemin.com or if you like the convenience of getting these articles by email and think your friends would too, just point them to MyContactSheet.com

I hope you enjoy the video.

For the Love of the Photograph,
David

PS – Want more like this? I send these articles out every two weeks to photographers around the world who want to improve their craft and explore their creativity and I’d love to include you. Tell me where to send it and I’ll send you a copy of my best-selling eBook Make Better Photographs, as well bi-weekly articles, first-glimpse monographs of my new work, and very occasional news of resources to help you keep moving forward in this craft we love.

“Each and every one of your emails inspire and motivate me to want to jump right out of my chair away from my computer and shoot for the love of it . Thank you David.” – Millie Brown

Ask photographers (or God help you, the internet) what makes a good photograph and it won’t be long before someone says, “a good photograph tells a story.” I don’t think that’s true. Not always. I think there are spectacular photographs that tell no story at all. They leave an impression. They elicit an emotional response. Others provide information. And if you’re not one of those photographers with “visual storyteller” printed on your business card, you need to know that your work is no less important. A lot of poems don’t tell stories, but it would be absurd for all the poets out there to feel like they should instead be short story writers or novelists.
 
An article from CameraWorld U.K. asserts, “Photographs tell a story when they incite an emotional response.” But many photographs do this well without telling a story. Abstracts. Expressionism. Impressionism. The article went on to say, “the best photos tell stories by prompting viewers to question what happens next.” This is partly true; photos that prompt viewers to question what happens next can be powerful, but not all photographs are about a happening.
 
Good photographs don’t necessarily tell a story any more than good writing must always tell a story. But storytelling is powerful, and the photographer who understands what makes stories powerful can use those same elements in photographs that don’t necessarily tell a story but leverage some of the same powerful elements to create powerful responses in us.
 
The question worth asking is, “how do we experience stories?” and then applying that to the kind of photographs we make. So stop reading and take a moment to ask yourself what makes a good story for you. What hooks you?
 
It’s important because even if the best photographs told a story (which, to be clear, I believe is untrue), we have to remember not all stories are good stories. Not every story connects or resonates.
 
So what makes a good story for you? This matters because if you can’t say what makes a good story, then there’s no hope of putting those elements into a photograph. Even if you don’t make “storytelling photographs,” you owe it to yourself to understand why stories are so important to humans that we’ve been called “the storytelling animal” because if you know why we resonate with stories, you can make photographs that press the same buttons.
 
This is not about how to tell stories with your photographs; it’s about how to make photographs that press the same buttons as good stories. Though if you understand these ideas, you’ll probably tell better stories as well.
 
Stories Have a Point of View.

All stories are told from a point of view—most of them by a narrator—and there are all kinds of ways a narrator might tell that story. How interesting the story is can be strongly influenced by how interesting you find the narrator. Sure, they tell you what’s happening, but the choices they make—what they leave in, what they leave out, the order in which they tell the events, and more—help determine whether you like the narrator, trust them, connect with them, and ultimately whether you enjoy the story.

A photograph with an interesting point of view can also pull us in. That point of view might be conveyed by where the photographer stands, which lens they opt to use, or the moment they choose. It could be a choice of shutter speed or the careful use of depth of field. But there were choices made, and the more interesting those choices are, the more likely it is that a particular point of view is put forward, as in “look at this, and look at it in this way.”
 
Are you being intentional about your point of view? Not only where you place the camera (though that’s huge) but also in your other choices.
 
Stories Have Characters We Connect With.

Not every image has a person or an animal in it, but many do, and the photograph will connect better when you make choices that allow the person responding to the image to connect with the characters. That doesn’t mean we have to like them, but you have to tell us something about them. I don’t need to know their whole life story, but the details you choose matter. What do the clothes tell me about the life they live and where they live it? What are they holding in their hands that tells me what they do or what might be about to happen? What does the look on their face tell me about who they are and what’s important to them? Individually these might not “tell a story,” but they might hint at one and make me care or, better yet, make me wonder.

Stories Have Mystery.

Wonder comes from mystery, from not knowing everything. A good storyteller knows that if everything is buttoned up and nothing is left unresolved, then there’s no work left for the imagination—and the imagination is too powerful to ignore.

Leave me something to wonder about, and I’ll remain more engaged than if you tell me everything.

 
Generally speaking, the more you include in your photograph beyond what is absolutely necessary, the more diluted it becomes. More information does not mean more impact. Often, it’s the opposite. So let elements of your image remain in shadow, allow a hand to enter the frame with no suggestion of who it belongs to, choose moments when the person in the frame looks out of frame and make me wonder what they’re looking at. Will it “tell a better story?” Not necessarily, but the same technique used in good storytelling can work for the same reasons in good photographs: mystery hooks us. It engages the imagination. 

Stories Have Setting.

Stories take place somewhere and usually somewhen, to coin a word; stories with a strong sense of place and time pull us in. Yes, they help the story make more sense in an informational way, but they can also establish mood. They can pique our interest because the way the narrator describes the place we feel like we’re there. We feel immersed in it or that we want to be immersed in it. A photograph of Venice might not tell a story, but it can still be powerful because we resonate with the way the photograph shows us the place. We feel it. We long for it. For those of us who have been there, you’ll be tapping into all the memories we have of the place, and memories, as science tells us, are just the stories we tell ourselves about events in our past.
 
The photographer who can wrap their mind around the idea of showing a sense of place or time in a way that has mood, in a way that feels a certain way (which might be as simple as getting out of bed a little earlier to photograph in beautiful light or seeking fog or rain) will not necessarily tell a full story but can create an image that resonates with the viewer in ways that great stories do.
 
Stories Have Conflict.

Something happens in a story. It’s one reason still photographs are so limited in what they tell in one frame, and it’s why I’m more comfortable saying a single frame can probably imply (or suggest) a story than really tell it. A story has a beginning, middle, and end, and most still photographs do not. But it’s more than just “something happens.” No one makes a movie of a person walking across the street. But make it hard for that person to cross the street, give them a challenge or an obstacle, and might become a story. Make it a challenge we identify with, make the stakes high enough, and we’ll really get into it.
 
Most still photographs don’t have conflict. But they do have contrast. Or, rather, they can. And when you make that contrast clear enough, we lean into the image in the same way we do with conflict in a movie. We notice contrasts and juxtapositions. They imply something. And if you make choices that amplify those juxtapositions—really make them clear, perhaps with your framing or choice of moment or a lens that makes background elements seem as large as foreground elements against which you are comparing them—then you’ll engage my attention.

Human beings notice differences. We compare and contrast, so do this well in your photograph, and though you may not tell a full story, you’ll be using a tool that storytellers have used for thousands of years.

 There’s a reason so many stories are about opposites: love and solitude, rich and poor, good and evil. We know that something’s gotta give, and one will prevail. But which one?

Storytelling is powerful, not only for the photographer hoping to “tell stories” but for any picture-maker. If you want your work to connect to the human being who will experience it, then you need to be aware of how that human being might experience it and which tools you might use to make that experience stronger. Choose a bolder point of view. Give us stronger characters, better yet give us characters with character. Don’t only give us a setting, give us a real feeling of place and time. Resist the urge to show us everything, leave something to the imagination. And become more aware of contrasts and juxtapositions. We resonate with these elements of storytelling. They aren’t the only things we resonate with, but they are powerful.

For the Love of the Photograph,
David

How is it that two photographers can stand in the same place and make two very different photographs? What accounts for the frustrating reality that, in that moment, one photographer can make something truly compelling and beautiful while the results of the other’s efforts are underwhelming? Surely it can’t be just better gear.

Sometimes it’s different gear. Different gear represents different possibilities, and if one photographer uses a tripod and a polarizing filter and the other has neither, then the results will be different. But what about when the gear is similar?

In my experience, it’s different thinking that explains the different results. Two photographers making different choices for different reasons will create different photographs, often very different photographs.

Photographs are made: they are created from a long series of choices that differ from one photographer to another. In the scenario above, it would be easy for the less experienced photographer to look at his image and say, “I made the same photograph, so why are they so different?” But that’s just it. They aren’t the same photograph; they’re different photographs of the same scene, and there is often a world of difference between the two.

In the same way that a great meal is rarely amazing only because of the ingredients, subject matter alone (our ingredients) rarely makes a photograph good or compelling.

A photograph is made of much more than the stuff you choose to include in the frame. Sure, you stood in roughly the same place, but what focal length did you use, and why? Did your faster shutter speed get in the way of representing the clouds in a way that a longer, slower shutter speed might have resulted in? Were your choices of aperture and the resulting depth of field the same? What about the moment you chose, or even the time of day? Did you underexpose it a bit? Use a filter, or introduce motion in the camera itself? Still not sure why the two photographs are so different?

And then, you pull the images into your chosen development tool, and one photographer brightens and warms their image while another does nothing. One might dodge and burn a little to lead the eye more effectively around the frame, or perhaps add contrast and selectively adjust saturation, while the other does nothing more than hitting Auto-tone and moving on.

Choices make the photograph, and it’s often a combination of many smaller choices rather than one big decision. It is often subtle, and subtlety comes from experience.

For example, it takes experience (perhaps I should say mindful experience) to learn that cranking the saturation up on the whole image is often less effective than raising it slightly in some areas while lowering it in others. That choice alone can reduce the visual competition created by too many colours at play and make a much stronger photograph without changing the basic ingredients. The same is true of sharpening or adding exposure or contrast. It takes experience to know that it’s not about getting the correct exposure but about getting the most expressive exposure.

Photography is not unlike cooking, though I don’t know many cooks who would say, “You know, I had the same ingredients and the same skillet, so I just can’t explain why the other meal tastes so much better.” Of course they can explain it. Cooking is their craft, and they know the end result comes down to the choices they made.

Cooking is not only about having ingredients and the tools to cook them. It’s about flavour profiles and textures and presentation and probably a million things I don’t understand because I’m not a chef, yet I do know a great meal isn’t made by a skillet but by a chef making great decisions. Interesting decisions. Unexpected, nuanced, and creative decisions that come not only from a deep knowledge of ingredients, tools, and techniques but also from how people experience flavour and texture: they know what makes a great meal.

Photographers are often too preoccupied with making “correct” decisions. Doing it by the book will get you “by the book” photographs, but is that all we want?

At the beginning, perhaps. Hell, when I started out, I would have been thrilled with “by the book.” But surely not as we mature in our craft. I hope that as we grow, we pay less attention to being merely correct, and spend more time being more creative in the combinations of our choices. Growth offers us the chance to start thinking less about the subject matter and the tools and more about how we might combine them in new ways to create certain feelings and tell specific stories, to make very different photographs with very similar tools and ingredients.

It’s in our choices, and choices come from thinking. Specifically, different choices come from thinking differently, and that leads to different results. Better results? Sometimes. But not always, though in those moments when the different choices lead to rubbish results, then you learn something, and you discover those particular ingredients don’t go so well together—at least not the way you put them together. Maybe the proportions were wrong. Maybe you seared when you should have baked. And yes, maybe it’s just that you just didn’t the right tool because sometimes that’s what makes the difference. I mean, there’s no way you’re going to make a great crème brulée using a hair dryer instead of a butane torch. (Of course a great chef who knows he’s missing a crucial tool will pivot and make something spectacular without it. Something different, sure, but something great. A great chef won’t make something mediocre and then blame his tools.)

So how do you learn to do this? I bet a great chef can sit down to a meal anywhere in the world—a meal that someone else cooked—and tell you more about it than you might ever guess. They’d talk about the ingredients, for sure, and how the potatoes in Peru are unlike potatoes anywhere else, but I bet the conversation would quickly become more interesting. What choices were made with those ingredients? What combinations of ingredients, in what proportions, and using which techniques resulted in those specific flavours? Which flavours and textures balance with, contrast with, or amplify each other to create the final result?

And maybe, if you’re sitting with a chef who truly loves their craft, they’ll tell you how they might have done it differently and to what effect, or which ideas this meal brings to mind for some hybrid dish they’ve only now just conceived. It’s highly unlikely they’ll rush home and buy a better skillet.

So I wonder, can you do the same with photographs? Can you look at another photographer’s work and let it wash over you and stir your emotions and imagination and then reverse engineer it to decode the choices made by that photographer? What did they do with their tools to mix the basic universal ingredients of every photograph: light, space, and time? Which combination of choices with gear, technique, and the elements in the frame resulted in this one photograph that makes you feel a certain way? And how might it all have been different had other choices been made? Think about it, because if you can do that when looking at the photograph, you’ll be better able to do it when making one.

This is a long, circuitous way of reminding you to study photographs. To reverse engineer them. To figure out why the photographs of others make you feel a certain way and how that was accomplished. Which choices did that photographer make? What was included and excluded? Does the focal length add something? What about shutter speed? The aperture, the placement of the camera? Is there mystery or mood in the image? Which choice or choices are responsible for that?  Is it all down to the choice of moment or use of colour?

We should be doing this all the time, not only to learn our craft but to revel in it. We create photographs. That’s what we do. Shouldn’t we have a deep and growing sensitivity to what makes one image a compelling visual experience while another might fall short? Shouldn’t we be thinking a little less about what makes a great camera and much more about what makes a great photograph?

For the Love of the Photograph,
David

Want to explore this more? I wrote The Heart of the Photograph to explore the choices we make, specifically as they relate to how our photographs will be experienced. If you’re looking for your next challenge as a photographer or the spark of new inspiration, you can get The Heart of the Photograph here on Amazon, or from your favourite bookseller.

What I’m about to show you is my favourite discovery of the year in terms of my workflow. I tend to do a lot of the same kinds of adjustments to similar photographs, especially when creating a body of work. I might globally add some exposure and contrast, tweak some colours, and then apply a mask to my main subject and make a few teaks there to draw the eye more effectively. Now I can do a lot of that by creating just one preset in Lightroom’s Develop module.

If you missed the first video in this series, you might want to watch it first. It’s only 20 minutes long and you can find it here. The second video (it’s only 10 minutes long) is below.

If you enjoy this kind of shorter video, I’d love to hear from you in the comments below. Even better, I’d love to hear from you if you’ve got ideas about topics you’d like covered, or if you have specific questions. Just leave them here!

New to the idea of dodging and burning or using selective adjustments to draw the eye? A few years ago I wrote Drawing The Eye, an eBook about this very thing. It became one of my most popular books. You can get it on Craft & Vision for only $16. If you get just one idea from this book I think it could the way you do your development, and how you feel about your final images.

Are you new to the idea of dodging and burning or using selective adjustments to draw the eye? A few years ago I wrote Drawing The Eye, an eBook about this very thing. It became one of my most popular books. You can get it here on Craft & Vision for only $16. If you get just one idea from this book I think it could the way you do your development, and how you feel about your final images.

For the Love of the Photograph,
David.

I love the masking tool in Lightroom Classic and it has seen some changes over the last few iterations, some of them pretty significant. I was asked recently about this and it seemed like something you might be interested in if you’re a Lightroom user. If you do any dodging and burning at all, the new AI functions are game changers, and they’re super easy. In fact, they’re so easy it might convince some of you to do a little more work with local adjustments to draw the eye to what’s important in the frame.

The easiest way to teach this is with video so I’ve put together a 20-minute tutorial for you. You can watch that below.

I hope this is helpful to you. If you’ve got questions that I can take a shot at answering, leave them in the comments.

PS – Want more like this? I send these articles out every two weeks to photographers around the world who want to improve their craft and explore their creativity and I’d love to include you. Tell me where to send it and I’ll send you a copy of my best-selling eBook Make Better Photographs, as well bi-weekly articles, first-glimpse monographs of my new work, and very occasional news of resources to help you keep moving forward in this craft we love.

“Each and every one of your emails inspire and motivate me to want to jump right out of my chair away from my computer and shoot for the love of it . Thank you David.” – Millie Brown

Landing in Nairobi last month, my usual fears were running amok. Would my luggage arrive with me? Would I have problems at customs? Would the bartender at the first camp be able to make me a decent Old Fashioned, of which I was desperately in need? You know the ones. But most heavy of all, the one weighing me down after so many safaris that I’ve now lost count, was this: would the work—the photographs—be good?

Or would I just do what I’ve done before, unable to find a new angle or shake off the old ways? Would I end up mowing the same patch of grass over and over, which is a real risk in any pursuit at which one begins to find some level of comfort or success?

I didn’t go to Kenya to make larger, sharper versions of the photographs I’ve made before. I went to make photographs that were, well, see, that’s the problem; I had no idea. I’ve grown in the last year, and creatively, I’m almost unrecognizable since I did my first safari in 2009. I wanted photographs that were more, I don’t know . . . visceral. Photographs that evoked more, if to no one else but me. In the back of my head, I heard the echo of something Jay Maisel once said: if you want more interesting pictures, then be a more interesting person.

My slightly adjusted version goes like this: if you want more interesting photographs, have more interesting experiences. Try something new.

Fortunately for me, I’d planned an itinerary that gave me some options where new and interesting experiences were concerned. For one, I’d planned for three nights at a rhino conservancy in the north, a place suggested to me by my guide in Nairobi the year before because I’d be allowed to get my cameras closer to the rhino than ever before. I’d also planned for four nights in Amboseli, known for large tuskers walking daily across the lake bed in front of Mt. Kilimanjaro, and then two nights in the south, where I’d booked some helicopter time to get me over the soda lakes known for colourful swirls of algae blooms and flocks of bright pink greater flamingos.

I had a blast. It was the most fun I’ve had with cameras in my hand in a while. But it was also (and here I’m coming around to my point) really hard. It was so outside my comfort zone that I felt like I was starting over. The helicopter especially had a way of making me stupid, like I’d never held a camera in my hand before. But it was all different. Walking with a wild elephant and then (somewhat counterintuitively) lying down in front of him as he approached is not a skill I’ve already learned. There’s no eBook for that; you just do it. You figure it out (mostly, what you figure out is how to hold the camera still and not soil your pants while still composing your shot).

The rhinos were different. One doesn’t (I am told) lie down in front of rhinos. But back in Nairobi, a friend had given me a metal cage that was just large enough to put my camera in—a contraption designed exactly for this purpose, and he suggested I give it a whirl. “Your guides will help you get it where you need it,” he said, and then I ran off to download a remote app to connect my Sony A1 to my iPhone, giggling like a little boy at the thought of getting my cameras so close to something so large.

A couple of weeks later, I was working with two guides whose skill was matched only by their patience as we worked to get the cage into the path of southern white rhinoceroses while fighting the very buggy remote software and trying at the same time to pay attention to composition and moment and keep my fingers crossed that at some point it would all come together. Most of the time, it didn’t. The connection between camera and iPhone would drop, the rhinos would go the other way, or they’d walk past it, tipping it over as they went. But I didn’t need it to work all of the time; the times it all goes wrong don’t matter (though they teach good lessons)—I only needed it to work sometimes, and it did. Brilliantly.

I had three nights to get the rhinos right. That meant focusing. It meant saying no when the radio was buzzing with news of a leopard or pride of lions. It meant going out each morning before dawn and returning after sunset, and skipping the traditional cocktail as the sun went down. It meant the answer was always yes when one of my wonderful guides smiled at me and said, “Shall we try just one more time?” (knowing he’d be saying it again and again until the light was long gone).

There’s an opportunity cost involved in being focused. What if the lion or leopard sighting was amazing? It takes some discipline to stick to the task, especially when the rhinos (and the remote software) have a strong mind of their own and the task isn’t looking promising. This was well outside my comfort zone, and when things weren’t working, it meant I was missing two shots: the one I was working on (i.e., screwing up) and the one I was saying no to elsewhere—the one with the three-legged leopard juggling five warthogs in perfect light.

The aerial photography was mind-blowing. Lake Magadi is a soda lake in southern Kenya, sitting a couple of kilometres from the Tanzanian border. The pH in the lake makes it prone to incredible algae blooms, and the results are bright and shifting colourful swirls. I was there to photograph these patterns with flamingos (fingers crossed) flying over them to give scale and life. How hard could it be? Well, it turns out there’s a huge learning curve. Time of day matters. Light matters. Keeping your shit together long enough to consider composition while the helicopter banks hard enough to make you reconsider your lunch choices matters, too. It’s just not easy. It crossed my mind several times that I could be making safer photographs (and certainly a little easier) back on the ground.

The best photographs I’ve made in the last 37 years have all included an element of risk. Sometimes that risk was physical, but most often, it was creative or psychological. The risk is often that the person I want to photograph will say no, or the photographs will be crap. The risk is that taking the time try a new approach means you’ll be missing the chance to do the stuff that does work. The tried and true. Sure, you’ll be repeating yourself, but better to go home with some version of what you’ve done before than nothing at all, right?

I don’t think so. I guess there’s an argument to be made to get your safety shots but is “safe” the best we can do? Is the goal of all this the creation of a photograph that’s only slightly different than the one you made before? I mean, if you liked the last one, you’ll like the next one, right? Perhaps. But I’ve found there is a law of diminishing returns at work, and I’m generally less satisfied with the same old stuff, even if the image is technically better. It just doesn’t thrill me. More importantly, I’ve found the risks that scare me are the ones most guaranteed to teach me some new thing, a new skill, or even just give me the proof that I really can do this. They’re the opportunities for a new challenge, and challenge—risk!—is necessary for creative flow. It’s where we do our best work.

Your risk is not my risk. Some of you will never feel the need to lie down in front of an elephant (in the company of guides and spotters who knew what they were doing). Some of you have no interest in helicopters or learning to use an iPhone to control your camera. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to bother with the  remote trigger thing. Too fussy, I thought. Too unpredictable. The results were too uncertain. Of course they were uncertain! It’s all uncertain! And that’s where we learn, grow, and find ourselves face-to-face with the unexpected. That’s where we find ourselves outside the rut we’ve been in, and it’s where we find—unexpectedly—a new groove. Those are the experiences I’m after.

Science disproves the idea that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. We old dogs (some older than others) are, in fact, much more teachable. We’ve learned how to learn. We’ve got less to lose. But oh, are we timid at times. 

It’s just easier to do what we’ve done and what we know works for us. But is it still working? The same-old, same-old? Is it still challenging you? Does it bring you the same rewards or joys? Or could the same-old be a foundation on which to build something new? A launching point for new experiences?

My own version of same-old is what gave me the muscle memory to do what I needed to do with the camera when I was otherwise distracted by the huge tusker in front of me. It gave me the recall and the instinct to do what I needed to do in the helicopter without thinking so I could focus more on the art direction than not falling out or trying to remember how to change my settings.

To return to my point, the magic is outside the comfort zone. Sometimes we’re forced there, but most often, we need to choose it. New experiences, new technology, new creative challenges, and new ideas—new tricks for old dogs. Maybe for you, it’s photographing people. Ack! Are you kidding? That’s terrifying! Exactly.

Maybe it’s as simple as changing the time of day during which you photograph. What? Photograph at night? But I don’t know how! Precisely. Maybe it’s time to learn to use strobes, create multiple exposures, or explore ICM. But what if I fail? Yup. But what if you don’t? And what’s “failure,” anyway? Don’t you mean, “But what if I learn?”

A good photograph is the product of many things. Light and our choices about it. Use of space and time. What we do with colour and perspective. Our choice of optics. Yes, sometimes it’s also the gear. A good photograph happens at the intersection of so many things, to which I want to add one more: risk. Play with the light, the gear, your point of view, and the choice of moment. Play with it all, because we learn when we play. But don’t play it safe.

I’d love to answer questions about any of this. Using remote triggers or helicopters, or if you just want to say hello, you can do that on my blog here. I’d love to hear from you.

Watch the short video above, or keep reading if you prefer the written word.

I think a lot photographers put all their creative eggs in too few baskets. They look to the work they do with the camera as job one, which it is. But it’s not the only job. It’s the sexy job, for sure. But it’s insufficient. Some photographers lean heavily on post-processing or development; you could also call it stylization. Less sexy, perhaps, but like you, I get a lot of joy out of seeing my chosen images get refined and come to life.

There are so many ways to think about both the camera work and the development work, and the creative opportunities in those two areas are almost limitless. I don’t know anyone who would deny that choices made with the camera and in development have a significant role in whether the final image succeeds or not. Whether it’s poetic or iconic, or whatever you hope your photograph is or does.

But what about the edit?

What about the choice of that one final image from among many? In the case of a body of work, what about the choice of the dozen or two dozen final photographs that get pulled from what might be hundreds or thousands of sketch images or possible alternatives?

How might we be thinking about that and the other choices and processes that surround those choices? And why are so few photographers talking about it when I know so many of them are overwhelmed by it? I wonder if it’s as simple as believing that it’s just not as important. Just pick something sharp and well-exposed and move on? Pick all the images that aren’t stinkers and call it done?

I think one of the most overlooked ways to improve your photography right now—without the need to upgrade your camera or get the latest version of your favourite lens—is to get pickier. To begin thinking about the edit or choice of final frames more creatively. More intentionally.

Ansel Adams said 12 images a year was a good crop. I don’t generally think of my photographs as plants, but I like his point. And I think our work would be better if we were more selective, more creative about the ways we looked at editing and more intentional in what we did with our images. I think we’d make better, stronger photographs.

I wonder . . . when you edit or select your best work, which questions are you asking yourself? What criteria do you have for making that selection? How much do you trust that process? Are you still deleting everything that doesn’t make the cut the first time around? Are you looking for quantity or quality—and do you have a clear system for understanding what that means to you?

I’ve heard it said that photographers are their own worst editors, but I wonder if that’s only because we often don’t give the editing as much thought as we give to our gear or our camera work. 

And—because I’ve been that guy—I wonder how many are just relying on the Un-Suck filter in Photoshop to “polish a turd” rather than choosing an image that’s, ahem, not a turd in the first place.

 
I have two points to this. The first is a plea. It’s more than the nudge I might normally give you. I’m practically begging you to ask yourself what it would take for you to be pickier with the images you choose as your final selects and which ones you relegate to the archives.

Could you be giving the whole process a little more time, or actually, because my approach to editing takes less time, could you be giving it more focus and attention?

Could you be clearer about your selection criteria and more intentional about what you’re choosing those images for in the first place? What would your accumulated work look like in a year if you didn’t settle on the 3-stars but chose, instead, the ones that were an unqualified “Hell, yes!”?

Your work can be so much stronger simply by choosing stronger photographs.

In my last video, I talked about three ways we could love our photographs more. This is the big one: desire more for them. Demand more from them. Hold out for the very best of them. Never settle. But how do we do that?

In a couple days I’ll be inviting you to join me for this year’s Beyond The Shutter course, which I created to help photographers get clearer about one big question (and the others that follow when you start asking it) and that’s this:

“I just shot a bunch of photographs. Now what?”

It’s about editing down to our best work, but more than that, it’s about how we think about editing, how we can make it less overwhelming, what criteria we can use to select our best work, and how we can use the tools of Lightroom to help with that?
 
It’s about doing something beautiful and meaningful with your photographs, like monographs, multi-media presentations, or web-galleries and using the tools you already have in Adobe Lightroom to do this much more easily than you might believe possible.
 
One of my most popular courses to date, Beyond The Shutter is a video course created to help you become the strongest photographer you can be. To be less intimidated, less overwhelmed by the stuff that needs to happen once you put the camera down, in order to make stronger choices. It’s about the neglected other half of our creative process, a part of our craft that—once I engaged with it myself and stopped being so ad hoc about it all—has become one of the most rewarding parts of what I do (rather than a dreaded after-thought).

I want to help change your thinking about it. I want to show you my own process and how I make things like the monographs I send out, and so much more.
 
You’ll get all the details on Sunday. The ideas and techniques I want to share with you will change your enjoyment of this craft you love so much, and will help you take next steps toward being more creative and intentional in the work you do beyond the shutter, and be more satisfied with the final results.

Last year’s course was amazing and brought huge changes to the photographers who joined me. They said things like “I never imagined this course would so increase my joy in making photographs. This deeper understanding of the editing process makes my own camera work more creative, focused, and playful,” and “You’ve hit this one out of the ballpark! I am so impressed with this series. I’m picking up so much concrete advice.“

Keep an eye open for more details and your invitation to join me for Beyond The Shutter. I’ll see you then.

Watch the 7-minute video above, or keep reading if you prefer the written word.

In my last video I resumed a conversation I’ve been dying to come back to. Specifically:

Why do photographers get so intimidated by the edit and the “now what?” that comes once we put the camera down? And are we missing important creative opportunities?

For years, I’ve been signing my letters to you with the words “for the love of the photograph,” and it occurred to me when I did so last week that we really do love our photographs. We must. Nothing else explains the time and money we spend on making them. But it has also occurred to me that we seem to love the photographs we are going to make—the next ones—more than the ones we’ve just made. We so often move on to the next thing so quickly. The next project. You know the one: the one for which you need that new lens. Or tripod. Or flash. I’m the same way, and there’s nothing wrong with creative momentum or new gear.

But I think if we loved the photographs we’ve just made as much as the ones we’re about to make, we’d make stronger images and have a richer photographic life.

So how? How can we do that? That might be one of your questions. The other question might be, “What on Earth is David going on about?” That’s fair too. Let me try to answer that with three ideas, or three ways we can carry the love of the photograph and the making of photographs, a little further.

Spend More Time With Them

In my last video I suggested you consider doing smaller edits when you’re working on a project. For what I do, I like daily edits, but whatever “smaller edits” mean to you and your work, I think you’ll benefit from it. But I also think multiple edits are important, and though I suggest spending more time, this multiple-edit approach is actually more effective and, in the end, takes less time.

I never completely trust my first edits. We choose our best work by looking through all kinds of different filters. There’s no telling what I might have been looking for when I did my first edits, so it’s always worth giving my images another look—and doing so at least three times rather than doing one gigantic, mind-numbing edit session to find the best of my work.

One of the best reasons for doing this, especially if you’re doing smaller edits as the work progresses, is that what a project looks like at the end and what it looked like at the very beginning are usually very different.

Our work grows and changes, as does how we look at that work. I know we get excited by the next thing, but one of the best ways to make new photographs when you can’t be out there with the camera is to revisit older work. Do another pass. See what comes to the top now that you’re seeing it with fresh eyes. I think not being in such a hurry with finding the best of our photographs, of revisiting them and giving them a second or third chance after we’ve shot them, is a stronger way of editing than the way it’s often done: one big marathon edit session after which we call it done and never give the unselected images another glance. That’s the first way we can give our photographs a little more love, and the result is stronger final images.

Do More With Them

I used to tell anyone who would listen to “print yer damn work!” Maybe you don’t print yourself. That’s OK; I don’t anymore, either. But I have it printed by a professional print lab, and it makes me a better photographer. There’s also such joy in holding the work and sharing it in tangible ways. When’s the last time you made a book, a slideshow or a collection of prints to pore over? When’s the last time you submitted them to a magazine or swapped out the prints on your wall?

If you want to love your photographs more, consider making something with them. The benefits are huge, and they’re practical. When we output our work, we spend more time with it. 




When that output is larger than what we might put on Instagram, or we have to spend money to make it happen, I think we’re more critical of that work. It keeps us honest and growing in our craft. 

I’ve found knowing what I will make with my photographs gives me an end game of sorts. It makes the edits easier when I know what I’m choosing my best images for. 

Protect Them

I also think if we love something, we protect it. Just last week I heard another story of a photographer who lost all their images because a hard drive crashed. I’ve heard stories of theft and fire or water damage as well, and I can’t for the life of me understand why photographers will spend so much money on gear and balk at buying whatever sized hard drives they need to create a simple backup of the work they’ve invested so much in. 




If your computer crashed right now or your main hard drive failed, how easy would it be to get back up and running without missing a beat or losing an image?

In case it’s been a while, this is just a reminder to consider giving your backup plan a second look. And if you aren’t current with your backups, maybe to take a moment a do that, you know, for the love of your photographs.

I’d love to hear from you on this. What do you do with your photographs once the camera goes back in the bag? You can be part of the conversation in the comments below.

Take a few minutes to watch the video above or, if you’re more of a written word person, keep reading.

When I came home from Kenya last year, I had a hard drive filled to busting with 30,000 images. I’d been photographing for 30 days, so that’s a daily average of 1,000 photographs which, it turns out, is really easy to do when your camera can not only do 30 frames per second but do so completely silently. Things kind of got away from me a couple of times! Combine that with my joy at just being there and making photographs, and it’s no surprise that I couldn’t have squeezed so much as a tiny JPEG file onto my hard drive when I was done.

I also came home with my edits mostly done. And my development work. And the monograph I sent out to the photographers in my community a week after I got home. By contrast, I have a friend who shot a safari five years ago who still hasn’t done a complete edit of his work. Five years later, his images are still sitting there begging to be seen, to be printed, or put into some form of creative output that can be shared with the world. 

Why? He gets overwhelmed by it all. And he doesn’t have a system. He looks at all those images and gets paralyzed. So while I’m excitedly making prints and sequencing monographs or web galleries, he and so many like him are doing…nothing.

It’s not a criticism. I know so many photographers who walk in the door after making a bunch of photographs and say, “Well, that was fun. Now what?” And because the edit can be so intimidating, it gets reduced to an ad hoc effort at picking a few good shots,  pushing some sliders around in Lightroom, and throwing them onto Instagram before moving on to the next thing. The reason I don’t criticize this approach (it’s really more a lack of an approach, isn’t it?) is because that’s how I used to do it, too.

Before I started doing assignment work, my editing was scattershot and intimidating. I probably still have folders of images from over 15 years ago that haven’t really had a fair shake. But client work forced me to get intentional about how I imported and organized my images, to be clear about my criteria for selecting the best of that work, and to be a little more systematic about the output.

That client work made a huge difference. Not just in my client work but also my personal work. Suddenly I was anticipating the output, and because I knew I’d be making something (a book or a monograph, for example), I started shooting more intentionally with that in mind. And I started thinking about editing much more creatively and purposefully.

By “editing,” I mean the work of selecting the best images from among the dross—or what I like to call the sketch images. It’s the work a photo editor would do if you or I had one, and it falls to us because, well, we probably don’t. In fact, I started looking at everything that needed to be done after the camera work was over as a more exciting creative opportunity and a chance to do something with my photographs.

This article is the first in a series in which I want to explore what we do after the camera goes back in the bag and the ways in which that can make us even stronger, more intentional, and more creative photographers when we take it out again.

The first question I want to ask (on your behalf) is this:

“How can I make the edit easier, less intimidating, or overwhelming?” 

I’ve got three initial ideas that I think can be really helpful, and they’re a big part of how I was able to come home with 30,000 images already mostly edited and the best of that work ready for output rather than dreading the pile of images I had yet to go through.

Just Look for the Best of the Best

We all photograph for different reasons and we all do things differently, but I think edits (especially the first edits done relatively soon after shooting) should be selections, not ratings. My own edit process goes much more quickly because I’m not looking for every single image that meets some basic minimal technical standard. I’m looking for the ones that make me lean in. The ones that make my heart sing. The ones that grab me and won’t let me not select them.

You might have a great reason for rating images, but I think trying to decide whether an image deserves 2, 3, or 4 stars slows the process. Because I’m looking for a few frames that are a decisive “Yes!”, I’ve found rating them makes me look for the wrong thing.

For me, a 3-star image isn’t a Yes! It’s a yawn.

Consider being more binary. Yes! Or no. After all, how many images do you really need? Wouldn’t it be easier just to look for the best 12 or 24? It is for me.

Do Smaller Edits

Break it down. I do daily field edits and come home with main selections already made. This makes it manageable, but it’s more than that. Doing daily edits means things don’t get away from you. It gives you a chance to spot things that aren’t working. For example, you’re more likely to notice that you accidentally shot small JPGs all day when you thought you had been shooting RAW. Or you discover your lens isn’t focusing quite right. Or your sensor needs cleaning. It’s better to discover that after one day of shooting and be able to fix it, rather than much later on when it’s just too late.

More than that, doing smaller daily edits harnesses the energy and excitement to comb through a manageable pile of images and give them your full attention, rather than later when the pile is much larger and your energy is diminished.Sure, I’ll do another pass later—usually a couple more passes—but the smaller edits make the best of my limited resources of time and attention (which wane after a few thousand images, let me tell you!).

Consider (or Choose) Your Output

Don’t just make photographs; make something with the photographs. I’ve found that knowing what I’m going to do with my images has made me a much better photographer and a much better editor. I now know what I’m choosing images for. 

My clients taught me to do this, but the biggest rewards have come in my personal work. I come home and almost always as a matter of creative habit, put my work into monographs and collections of prints. I now think in terms of bodies of work and collections and sequences, and that has also had huge payoffs in my creativity and the ongoing question of what I can do with my images rather than letting them sit on my hard drives hoping to see the light of day.

Those three ideas alone have made my editing simpler: looking only for the best and not worrying about the others, doing smaller bite-sized edit sessions, and consider your output, which allows you to think not only about which images are best, but best for what.

I’d love to hear from you about this. Where do you find your greatest challenges when it comes to choosing your best work and doing something with them, staying organized, and doing all the work that happens beyond the shutter? If you feel like talking about it, drop me a note in the comments below.

“Life is like a camera. Just focus on what’s important and capture the good times, develop from the negatives, and if things don’t work out, just take another shot.” – Anonymous

Respectfully, life is not like a camera. To assert otherwise is glib and cheesy and only shows a lack of experience in both life and photography. Life is so much more complex, and if you’ve lived a rich and deep life, you’ve probably also had your share of sorrows and times so dark, so entirely absent of light that you couldn’t possibly make a photograph even if you were inclined to pick the camera up in the first place. If life were like a camera, I’d have traded mine in many times over the years for a better model, you know what I mean? I’d also have asked for a bigger…lens.

No, life isn’t like a camera, but there’s an idea in that quote that resonates; I believe the notion that the skills it takes to become a mindful photographer are among the skills that make for a good life.

It takes an awareness of moments (not just in the big strokes but in the subtleties hardly noticed by others), the small details that give those moments their complexity and nuance. If it’s true that how we live our moments is how we live our lives, then the person who has learned to experience those moments more fully will experience life more fully. We can’t control how long we live (though we can probably lengthen our lives a little if we stop doing stupid shit), but we can choose to live with greater depth. And the camera is a gift of grace if it helps us hone our sensitivity to the quality of passing time, even slowing it, giving us the space to wonder and to remember moments that might otherwise have been forgotten or even unnoticed in the first place.

With time, photographers learn that nearly everything within the frame looks different with a change of perspective. A move to the left or right, up or down, controls how elements in the frame relate to each other. The story changes, often dramatically, when we alter the angle from which we view it. A different lens, a different filter, and it changes again. The photographer with some experience understands that vision is not only what we see but how we see, and that’s as true with the camera in our hands as it is without it. In that way, life is not at all like a camera. Life is the subject.

How we see and experience life is very much a question of where we choose to place the camera and the perspective we choose to embrace. Understanding that goes a long way to the making of an interesting photograph, not to mention an interesting life.

I’ve had a camera in my hand for so long that I don’t remember what it was like to be without it. I don’t know that the 13-year-old version of me ever looked out at the world as I am this morning, the fog dropping down from the hills behind my home, and experienced wonder at the light as the sun struggles to break through. Thirteen-year-olds often have their minds elsewhere. But the camera has persistently nudged me since then to notice. “Look at the light,” it implores us.

A photographer begins by paying attention to how much light is there and slowly gains a sensitivity to its other qualities: is it warm or cool, is it hard or soft, from what angle does it paint a subject, having come 147 million kilometres to do so? With time, a photographer learns to value the shadows, to see them not as the absence of light but as a source of mystery, and to include them as important parts of a composition. In a photograph, mood and real feeling are often created with less light (even colours become more saturated and intense) when underexposed.

It seems to me that a life well-lived is one in which we find light in unexpected places and look long enough into the shadows that we find mystery, not fear.

The photographer works in light, space, and time. Those are the raw materials, and you need a camera to make a photograph from them. But once learned, the greater gift is found beyond the camera: experiencing more fully what’s before our eyes and perceiving it with greater creativity. Being more aware of time and the moments our lives are made of, perhaps not to conjure more of them but to experience more deeply the moments we have. Becoming more sensitive to light, seeing the full spectrum, and finding something redeemable (if not downright beautiful) in the shadows.

What photography does not do and cannot do is encourage us to take another shot “if things don’t work out.” A sensitivity to time (and to the unique quality of moments that will never repeat themselves) does the opposite. It urges us to do it now. While we can. To press the shutter, to seize the moment. It’s true; you might miss it. And you might even get another crack at it. But as I turn 51 in a few days, I’m more aware than ever that there are fewer moments ahead of me than have passed me by. This doesn’t dissuade me from taking risks but the opposite. The time is now.

Moments are seldom repeatable. Not the moment the moon rises like a silver sliver under a blanket of heavy cloud over Hernandez, New Mexico (Ansel Adams, 1941), not the moment a man in a hat jumps a puddle behind the Gare Saint-Lasazre in Paris (Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1930), and not the moment you inhabit now.

To be more sensitive to time is to be more mindful of its passing. Maybe we get another chance to say “I love you”; maybe we don’t.

Maybe we get many more years to photograph the family together, put away the old tensions that have kept us distant, or make time for each other. Maybe we don’t. But we do have now, and more urgently: we might only have now. You can make a photograph in almost any light, and you can choose one of many different perspectives; what you cannot do is make a photograph of a moment that has passed. I suppose I might not have needed a camera to teach me that had my life gone in a different direction, but it has helped.

Life is not like a camera. It’s so much more. But the camera has given me a richer life, and for that, I am most grateful.

Among the many gifts it has imparted is you. And before the moment passes, I want to tell you how grateful I am for you. I make the photographs I create and write what I do not only for me but for you. I do it in the hopes of making a difference, of making your life a little fuller in some way. I couldn’t do that if you didn’t read what I write or care about what I photograph. You give me purpose and a place to put my love for this craft and those who practice it, and I am incredibly grateful. Thank you.

Cynthia joins me in wishing you a holiday filled with light, and for those of you for whom those lights cast more of a shadow this year than they did last year, we wish you love and courage.

For the Love of the Photograph,

David

PS – Want more like this? I send these articles out every two weeks to photographers around the world who want to improve their craft and explore their creativity and I’d love to include you. Tell me where to send it and I’ll send you a copy of my best-selling eBook Make Better Photographs, as well bi-weekly articles, first-glimpse monographs of my new work, and very occasional news of resources to help you keep moving forward in this craft we love.

“Each and every one of your emails inspire and motivate me to want to jump right out of my chair away from my computer and shoot for the love of it . Thank you David.” – Millie Brown

In my last article, I suggested studying the work of others as one path toward making your own work stronger. To shoot what things feel like requires that we first have feelings about things but also to understand what possibilities exist for translating feelings into photographs themselves. It’s a conversation that could get touchy-feely really quickly, but if it gets too far from the practical nitty-gritty of how this actually happens with a camera in hand, I’m not sure it’s a helpful conversation.

What makes that conversation difficult, however, is that there are no formulae. I can’t tell you which choices to make to create a sense of mystery, which colours to include to make an image feel sensual, or which aperture best expresses your own reaction to a person of whom you are making a portrait. Any one-size-fits-all recommendation would only hamper your creativity and fail more than it succeeds. What I can do is point you in a direction that has helped me become much clearer about translating my emotions to photographs in my practice of this craft: studying the work of others.

The last photo book that landed on my doorstep was Ernst Haas’s The American West. I’ve been a fan of Haas since I first discovered his book Color Correction, and I eagerly anticipated The American West. My journey through the book has been much like the others that weigh down my bookshelves.

I start with an overall impression. I flip through it and enjoy the whole book, image by image. I take note of the things that jump out at me and my reactions. Sometimes those reactions are to the images themselves; sometimes, it’s to the curation. For example, while much of The American West features colour, there are a handful of monochrome images, and I noted my strong reaction to this. There is an image on the cover (later repeated in the book) of a bronco rider caught with a slow shutter speed, and I love this image. It’s a great example of “don’t shoot what it looks like but what it feels like.” Here again, I note my reaction. I’ll come back to this.

Once I’ve casually flipped through the whole book, I go back to the beginning and read the introduction. The introductory essays in photo books are sometimes a little tough to get through but are almost always worth the effort because they can help me understand what the photographer was trying to accomplish, as well as the constraints and motivations or the historical importance. Understanding what any artist is trying to accomplish goes a long way to understanding the work itself. Once I’ve done this, I go through the book much more carefully, usually a little more informed than I was when I formed my first impressions.

The questions I’m asking are many, but they all come down to this: why did the photographer make the choices they made? What do they seem drawn to? Is it colour? Moments? Patterns? Why this framing and not another? And what might they be trying to say? It’s certainly speculative and we can often only guess, but it’s helpful all the same.

Remember Stephen Shore’s comment about good photographers having a combination of interesting perceptions and an understanding of how the camera translates the world into a photograph?

When you study the work of others, you’re asking what clues you can find about how they perceive the world, what they’re interested in, and how they choose to use their cameras to express or explore that.

You’re also asking how you feel about the photographs, and why? What visual effect are you responding to, and how? If you feel agitated about the image, don’t turn the page until you determine what’s causing that feeling. Is the lack of negative space making you feel claustrophobic? Is it the intense red that dominates the image? Maybe it’s the quality of the chosen moment that brings tension with the look on a face within the frame. If your eye rests on a frame and lingers longer there than another, why is that? If you find an image particularly soothing or serene, why? Is it funny? What makes it so?

Ultimately, you’re not only studying the work of others but your own reactions to it. You’re studying yourself. 

You’re taking inventory of how you feel about the depth of field, the colour, the composition, the moment, the light. You’re acquiring tools, especially if you never let yourself off the hook until you can put it into words, as in: “I feel this particular way because the photographer made this particular choice or combination of choices.”

Some Helpful Questions

What choices are other photographers making to create the images to which you react? You’ve probably got to know that before you can know how to do it yourself.

When you see a photograph and the only words you can find are “I like it” (or don’t), then the next step is to figure out why. Which visual tools were employed?

How did the photographer treat the light? Describe it. Is it hard or soft? Does it create shadows? Is it dramatic or sensual, or does it have some other quality?

How did the photographer compose the image? How do you feel about the space? Is there a real sense of scale, or is it tight and confining? How does that make you feel? Would you feel differently if there were more (or less) negative space?

What about the relationship of the elements to each other? Do they imply a story? Do they complement each other or contrast? Is there a juxtaposition that makes you laugh?

What about the use of colour? How do the colours themselves make you feel, not only in terms of the hue but how saturated they are—how light or how dark? Is it cool or warm? Cool and warm are visceral (not visual) words. That’s another way we react to what’s in the image.

What did the photographer include or exclude? Does the choice of moment stir your imagination or emotions in a way another moment might not have done? 

Where was the photographer standing? Does that affect how you feel? The photographer who looks down with the camera upon a beggar in the street also forces us to look down on that beggar. How does that choice make you feel? You are reacting to the choices the photographer made.

There will also be images to which you do not react, and I think that’s as instructive. Remember, you are ultimately studying yourself. Why are you not responding to this? What’s missing? You’re not judging the photograph; you’re scrutinizing yourself. You’re learning what you react to.

There is great benefit to be found in reverse engineering the choices of another photographer in order to understand your reaction to them. You’re not saying “this is a bad photograph”; you’re saying “this choice makes me feel this way.” You can use that.

To study the work of others is to learn what you respond to. It helps give meaning to your choice of one shutter speed over another because one choice will create an effect in an image that another choice will not. The same is true of apertures and focal lengths. You can learn all of this not just from looking, scanning, or scrolling through the work of others but by studying it.

Cause and effect, my friend. That’s what you’re looking to become sensitive to. The photographer did this (cause), and it created an effect in the resulting photograph that I experience in particular ways.

To look at it a different way, maybe you could ask questions like these as you study:

• What is the light doing?
• What does colour contribute?
• What role do the lines and shapes play?
• What’s the point of view?
• What’s the quality of the moment?
• Where is the story?
• Where is the contrast?
• What about balance and tension?
• What’s the energy?
• How does the space and scale make me feel?
• What about depth?
• Where’s the mystery?
• Are there elements that are symbolic?

These kinds of questions can guide your study of the work of others. They can guide your study of your own work and the creation of your photographs. These are only some of the questions, but they will teach you if you’re open to it and willing to put in the work to understand how you respond viscerally to these visual choices. If you’re just starting out, this will be much harder, but I promise you’ll get there.

That list, by the way, is part of a longer list that comes from the table of contents of my book, The Heart of the Photograph, which I wrote to explore the big question: what do we respond to in a photograph?

If you don’t have The Heart of the Photograph, the timing on this is perfect because my publisher, Rocky Nook, is offering 50% off my books (and the books of others like Joe McNally, Chris Orwig, or Guy Tal, to name a few) until November 30, so you’ve got a few days to get in on it. And if you live in the continental USA, they’ll also cover the shipping.

Just use coupon code DUCHEMIN50 at check out. If you don’t already have them, Within The Frame, The Soul of the Camera, and The Heart of the Photograph make a great set!

Some Favourite Photography Books

For those of you asking for a little guidance on how to study the work of others, this is my starting point, and I hope it helps. I’d love to hear how you approach studying the work of the masters. In fact, I’d love to hear which photographers you most love to study. Leave a comment, and we’ll all benefit. A few years ago, I made a list of some of my favourite photography books, and that might also be a good place to begin for you.

The Backlight Feedback Winner Announced

Finally, a big thank you to those of you who took a moment last week to give me your thoughts on a project I’ve been contemplating. Your feedback gave me a lot of food for thought, and I thank you. As promised, I have drawn one name for those who replied, and I’m thrilled to offer an hour of mentoring or any one of my online courses to Cindy Mirabella. I’m so thankful for all your thoughts, reactions, and many kind words.

Questions? Thoughts? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

For the Love of the Photograph,

David

I was young when I first heard some version of this advice: don’t shoot what it looks like; shoot what it feels like.

That resonated with me then, and it still does, but I feel like my entire photographic journey has been spent trying to figure out what it practically means in a way that translates to my photographs.

“Shoot what it feels like” is great advice, but it’s low on any real actionable kind of next steps. It leaves me asking how? In hindsight, I’m glad I had to figure it out myself (I seem to learn better that way), but a little help along the way would have been welcome. I wish someone had told me I needed to learn what we actually respond to in a photograph.

The things in a photograph to which we respond. Keep that idea in mind because I’m going to come back to it.

I don’t think there is one single thing that leads to better photographs, though Stephen Shore comes close when he says: “It seems to me that a good photographer is a combination of two things: one is interesting perceptions, and the other is an understanding of how the world is translated by a camera into a photograph.”

I don’t know how to nurture the first of those except to suggest that the richer your inner life—the more complex your ideas and the sources from which you mine those ideas—the more likely you are to have interesting ways of seeing the world. But an understanding of how your camera sees the world and represents it visually in a photograph? That, I think, is one key to knowing how to “shoot what it feels like.”

The camera sees the world differently than you do. This is not so much a challenge to be overcome but a creative possibility to be used.

You, for example, can’t control depth of field when you look at a scene with your naked eye, but the camera can. Without a camera, you don’t have the benefit of different focal lengths and the magnification, angle of view, or distortion they make possible. You can’t under- or overexpose a scene. You can’t freeze a moment or blur it. The camera can. That’s how we “shoot what it feels like.”

When we use the camera not as a simple recording device but as a creative tool that can translate light, space, and time into an image in a million different ways, we get our first hints about the possibilities and the many feelings with which we might imbue our photographs.

Feelings created by the aesthetic effects of our technical choices. The choice to blur motion with a slower shutter, for example. Or the choice to partly obscure a subject with bokeh, the out-of-focus circles of light created by a wider aperture’s shallower depth of field. We feel these.

As another example, we shoot what it feels like when we choose a different point of view that forces the viewer of our photographs to take a different perspective themselves. A change in point of view can not only change what the image looks like but how it feels. We shoot what it feels like when we choose our moments more carefully and pay attention to the way colour works or how we tell a story.

You will become a better photographer as you think as much (or more) about aesthetic effects than you do about just their technical causes.

Beginning photographers think first about apertures and focal lengths, shutter speeds, and other matters of craft because those are the fundamentals and they aren’t easy to master. Like learning basic vocabulary and grammar of a spoken or written language, they need to come first. But eventually, you need to start thinking about how you can use those basic tools with greater power or subtlety to create a specific feeling or communicate a certain idea.

Beginning writers must first learn to use and think about vocabulary and grammar. To become a better writer, you need to think about bigger things: rhythm, how words sound together, and how to use devices like irony or sarcasm (because those are among the things to which we respond). To grow as a writer, one needs to begin thinking of the effect of the words and why one might choose some words over others to create that effect.

To shoot how it feels requires that we think not only of basic decisions of craft but the visual results of those decisions (and how we respond to them, but I’m not quite there yet). Beginners think of aperture and shutter and focal length and try to recall the basics of composition—and so they should; they are the fundamentals that need to be learned first. Those technical choices will get you to “what it looks like.”

But photographers who long to grow past those basics need to think about what those choices create in the image. They are how the camera translates the world into a photograph, and they are what will create the things we respond to with our feelings: depth, energy, balance, tension, use of space, colour, movement and juxtaposition, to name a few. We respond to those, among others: Mood. Mystery. Symbolism.

I became a better photographer (and continue to evolve as one) when I started thinking about how the camera’s unique ability to see and translate the world might create not a technical result but an aesthetic one.

I became a better photographer when I began to think about the more human side and ask: to what do we respond, either with our imagination or our emotions, in a photograph?

If you are willing to explore that, I think you can then more consistently make photographs to which people respond. If you can say to yourself, “I’m making technical choices X, Y, and Z, because they will create (for example) depth, mystery, and mood,” then you’re closer to making more meaningful technical choices that create an aesthetic to which we respond.

So, how do you shoot what it feels like? I think it happens at the intersection of three ideas:

1. Interesting perceptions;
2. A growing understanding of how the camera translates the world into a visual experience; and
3. A sense of what it is to which we respond in a photograph.

We need something to say, creative ways to say it, and a sensitivity to the way humans respond to, or experience, the medium itself.

For example, do you have a sense of how to create a feeling of depth in your images? Because the camera has particular ways of creating depth in an image, and we respond to that depth with feeling. It engages us.

Have you ever considered the emotional charge of the colours you use? What about something as simple as the aesthetic effect of the bokeh created by that /1.2 lens you own? Sure, it looks “cool,” but I wonder if we can do better than that. How does bokeh affect you?

We respond to nostalgia, too. And to the sensuality of a certain kind of line. We respond to the mystery created by a missing detail and the humour created by an interesting juxtaposition.

We (and those with whom we share our photographs) rarely respond to an image only because it’s sharp and well-exposed, or for that matter just because we’ve embraced intentional camera motion, double exposures, or incomprehensible gimmicks like lens balls.

If we want to be better, evolving photographers capable of making images to which other humans respond, we need to think about what we respond to and how to collaborate with the camera to create it. I don’t know how we can shoot what it feels like if we ourselves don’t know what makes us feel one way or the other.

A good place to start is to study the work of others and figure out what you respond to in photographs. Is it energy? How was that created? We could do a whole masterclass about energy alone. How colour affects energy. How certain lines and different moments amplify, dilute, or change that energy, and how the emotional energy of an image can change simply with a change in glance or posture from the human in the frame. All this gets read and experienced by the human outside the frame.

That’s the point of this: the human experience. First and foremost for the human making the image, who longs for something more from their photographs. Perhaps it’s impact; perhaps it’s just a way to express thoughts and feelings or to pass on the wonder you experience in the face of great beauty. And then secondarily, it’s the others with whom you want to share that emotion. We need that feeling or emotional awareness, but as artists and practitioners of our craft, we need to know how to translate the visual into the visceral. Are you making exposures or experiences?

Got a moment to give me your opinion on something I’ve been thinking about? I’ll explain more here. Leave me your thoughts to 3 simple questions and you could win a portfolio review or free enrollment in one of my online courses.

For the Love of the Photograph,
David

PS – Want more like this? I send these articles out every two weeks to photographers around the world who want to improve their craft and explore their creativity and I’d love to include you. Tell me where to send it and I’ll send you a copy of my best-selling eBook Make Better Photographs, as well bi-weekly articles, first-glimpse monographs of my new work, and very occasional news of resources to help you keep moving forward in this craft we love.

“Each and every one of your emails inspire and motivate me to want to jump right out of my chair away from my computer and shoot for the love of it . Thank you David.” – Millie Brown

There is a powerful argument to be made for photographing what intrigues you, what you love, or that by which you are obsessed. Making photographs takes time, so that curiosity, love, or obsession serves you well when your best work demands not fractions of a second or even minutes, but hours, days, or—in the case of longer projects—even years. 

Bears have become a growing obsession for me. I don’t know where it comes from or what part of me these bears touch so deeply, but it’s not unlike the feeling I get in the presence of other large creatures like leopards, lions, sharks, or whales. Maybe it’s the notion of something bigger than I am—something so entirely other.

I’ve just come back from another ten days with the grizzly bears on the shores of the Chilko river. They converge every year in the fall as the salmon arrive in their hundreds of thousands (a million this year) to spawn where they themselves were spawned four years prior. Those salmon have spent the last three years in the ocean and have now climbed 3,000 vertical feet to return here to guarantee there will be the next generation, and then they die and return their nutrients to the water, the bears, and the forest. For their part, the bears have come to feast and fatten before climbing the nearby mountains and denning for the winter at 8,500 feet. The females who have mated earlier in the year will depend on this food. If they reach 33% body fat or higher, they will become pregnant through delayed implantation as they lie in their dens, gestate for only six weeks, and give birth over the winter. When fall comes, those cubs (known as cubs of the year) will join their mother as she teaches them to fish and feast on the salmon.

So on September 28, I loaded my gear into Lucy (remember Jessie, the Defender, and Emily, the Jeep? Lucy is a new-to-me Toyota Tacoma that has recently become my new adventure partner) and headed north, picking my way through the coastal mountains and lakes around Whistler and Lillooet before driving through the stunning Cariboo and Chilcotin—the foliage on the aspens at their golden climax—and finally to the Chilko River, filled with a million sockeye flashing red under bluebird skies. It’s a place of such wild beauty that it’s hard not to get a little wordy about it. 

After ten days of photography, I drove home with hard drives full of images and a heart and mind filled with memories of bears swimming through waters so heavy with reflections that they might as well have been swimming through paint. And the light! The backlight, the reflections, and the colour still blow my mind days later as I work my way through the photographs I made.

This last trip marks the beginning of my second year with Sony gear. I came home a little frustrated with the limits of my FujiFilm gear last year, finally admitting to myself that what it did so well on the streets it didn’t do so well with wildlife. The focus speed and the availability of truly world-class optics for the Sony make my work so much easier (not necessarily better; that’s on me).

I’m now using a couple of Sony a1 bodies and primarily shooting a 600/4.0 lens, and though I’m not a “gear guy” in the way some photographers are, I’m almost ashamed to admit how much I love this gear. It just does what it’s meant to when I need it to, and after the frustrations I had with FujiFilm, it’s refreshing to put the camera to my eye and nail the focus the first time, which means fewer unpleasant surprises. So for those of you who have recently asked if I’m happy with my move, I couldn’t be happier. I don’t love the Sony brand (it’s not sexy the way Nikon or Leica is), and I don’t love the ergonomics the way I loved my FujiFilm cameras, but the performance is out of this world better for me.

I am shooting at higher ISOs now, not so much because my wildlife work happens in darker situations (though that is sometimes the case), but faster-moving critters demand higher shutter speeds (1/1000+) than I ever needed on the streets (often closer to 1/30 or slower). So I’m regularly hitting ISO 6400, and while the thought of that once terrified me (I still remember stressing out about going to ISO 800 on my early digital cameras), I’m much more relaxed about it now—but I haven’t always been happy with the results. Enter DxO PureRAW 2.

PureRAW 2 is a plug-in for Lightroom, though it can also be used as a stand-alone product. It’s a little clunky to use, but the results are astonishing. I’ve been a bit frustrated with my own efforts at noise reduction and sharpening in Lightroom, so I asked my best friend Jon what he uses, and because he’s much smarter than I am, I decided to give it a try. I’ll let you read the online reviews for yourself if you’re into that, but I wanted to at least alert you to it because I’m honestly gobsmacked by what I’m seeing.

Here’s a brief overview: import your images, find the best of the best, and then (here’s where it gets clunky) choose your image (or folder of images) and go to File > Plug-in Extras > Process with DxO PureRAW 2. A dialogue then appears, you set a couple of preferences (like what you want to name the new file(s)) and hit the Process button. PureRaw 2 then creates a new sharpened and de-noised (and lens-corrected) DNG file for you. It also renames it according to your preference (I add DxO to the end of my file name), and it then puts it where you want it. Now you can process the new DNG file the way you normally would. And if you’ve already done your development, let’s say with years of older images you’d like to clean up, there’s no need to start over; your changes will all stick in the new DNG file.

So how good is it? The noise reduction, sharpening, and lens corrections all happen together and dramatically exceed my own efforts. You probably already know that I don’t get too excited about how sharp images are. If that’s what people are commenting on, then you’re probably not making very interesting photographs. But if noise or lack of sharpness are getting in the way of what your photographs could be, then I say use whatever it takes. Maybe I’m late to the party on this one (story of my life), but if you’ve never heard of DxO PureRAW 2, then check it out (and yes, it now works with FujiFilm X-trans files, of which I have thousands and a few that will really benefit from what PureRAW 2 can do). Here are before and afters on two of my images that I think show the results quite well:

For larger prints, this is going to change everything and make me much happier with the resulting photographs.

By the way, the DxO people wouldn’t know me from Adam, so I’m not getting a penny for talking about it (I paid full price for my version), and I’m not recommending the product so much as saying, “Hey, look what I found!” My own exploration of this plug-in is very new at this point, but so far, I’m really impressed. DxO offers a 30-day free trial here, and is only USD$129 to purchase. Not to overstate it, but it might be the best $129 I’ve spent on my photographs in a long time.

Enjoy the bears! I’m off to Churchill, Manitoba, to photograph polar bears next week. I’ll touch base when I’m back!

For the Love of the Photograph,
David

PS – Want more like this? I send these articles out every two weeks to photographers around the world who want to improve their craft and explore their creativity and I’d love to include you. Tell me where to send it and I’ll send you a copy of my best-selling eBook Make Better Photographs, as well bi-weekly articles, first-glimpse monographs of my new work, and very occasional news of resources to help you keep moving forward in this craft we love.

“Each and every one of your emails inspire and motivate me to want to jump right out of my chair away from my computer and shoot for the love of it . Thank you David.” – Millie Brown

To become a competent photographer is, as you well know, no mean feat. To become the kind of photographer that makes photographs that are uniquely your own is even more challenging. Both journeys are intertwined and—lucky for we who love that adventure—lifelong. Since January, I’ve been working on something for you that will help bring those two roads together. It’s called The Photographer’s Voice and this morning I invite you to watch the first episode, totally free.

Episode One of The Photographer’s Voice will take 20 minutes to watch—just enough for a cup of coffee. It’s part of a larger project and a bigger idea: how can we shoot, select, and stylize photographs, specifically in series or bodies of work, that are truly “us”? How can we make images that say something and say it in our own unique way?  

Over the last few weeks, I’ve asked this question: how do we learn to shoot like ourselves? If no one alive is “you-er than you,” as The Cat in The Hat reminded us, then how do we make photographs that reflect that uniqueness? The Photographer’s Voice is a 10-episode video exploration of that question, and includes three webinar-style Zoom calls with me to go deeper and ask me anything.

Enrollment is open today for an introductory price of $149 USD and is open for this week only (ending at 9pm Pacific time—that’s GMT-8—on Friday, September 30, 2022).

I’m keeping this email short because I want you to have the time to watch the first episode of this new series, and more words are only going to slow you down. When you click the link to watch the video, it’ll take you to a page with all the details for those of you who want to go deeper with these important ideas.

The big mistake in photography is believing you have to become “good” (whatever that means) before you begin to explore the ideas and techniques that give you your photographic voice when it’s those latter concepts and tools that are what make you better, stronger, and more “you” with the camera and in your photographs themselves.

Take a moment today to watch episode one of The Photographer’s Voice.

I hope you’ll join me for this next adventure.  

For the Love of the Photograph,
David

When I was a kid, our family got a roll of film developed every couple of months, and I remember getting the envelope of 4×6 prints back from the lab and hearing my mom remind me not to touch the prints.

“You’ll get fingerprints on them,” she’d say.

Not one to waste a good metaphor, as an adult, that’s all I really want from my photography: to make photographs with my fingerprints—my unique mark—all over them. I want my work to be more and more my own. We don’t all photograph for the same reasons, but I know this desire isn’t unique to me: I know that while most of us want to make images that are good or compelling, it’s more meaningful if those images are truly yours.

That’s photographic voice, and it’s not an easy thing to find (or create) in your work. But when you do, and you make a photograph or a series of images that feels like it’s really “you,” there are few feelings that compare.

Voice can come across in many ways in your images. For some photographers, it’s how you compose and your choice of subjects; for others, it’s a certain technique, like Valda Bailey’s abstracts and impressionism which I pointed you to last week (LINK). For some, it’s the kind of black and white treatment you use, and still for others, it’s the way you use or control colour. For most of us, it’s some particular combination of all of those and many more.

Voice is found in your choices about those things and the harmony between them, who you are, and what you’re trying to say.

The world of cinematography isn’t so different from still photography, but cinematographers seem to be much more conscious about some of these choices, specifically colour. I’ve spent the last year deepening my understanding of, or sensitivity to, colour, mostly because I felt that a photographer who uses colour (which I do as much as I also use monochrome) should probably be more aware of this profound tool for visual expression than I have been at times.

Colour is a big topic. So big that it can be really confusing, especially when you start breaking out colour wheels and talking about colour modes and spaces and the nitty gritty science of it. I’m less interested in these than I am in how colour makes us feel, how we read and respond to colour in photographs, and how we use it to express the subjects, ideas, or moods in our images.
To that end, I’ve got three ideas I want to offer up for your consideration where more creative and personal use of colour is concerned.

1. Become more aware of how colour makes you feel.

It’s got to begin with you because while it’s easy to make blanket observations about how red is a more passionate colour and yellow is a happy colour, there are a million different kinds of red, or yellow, and not all of them make us feel the same way.

A bright warm yellow is not emotionally the same as a light pastel yellow; they feel different. They pull our eyes differently, and they pull our thoughts and emotions differently as well. One shade of red feels passionate, another feels powerful, and still another—like a soft pink—might feel delicate and innocent, the opposites of passion or seduction or power.
Becoming more aware of the colours you actually see and how you respond to them as you react to the world and the photographs around you (as well as which colours and combinations you prefer and those you don’t) is a first step in using colour more intentionally and creatively.

Honing your sensitivity to colour will make you a much stronger colour photographer.

2. Become more aware of the qualities of colour.

Go back in your mind to the different associations I just mentioned about the colour red. There are warmer reds and cooler reds, softer reds, and brighter reds. We give them all kinds of names: fire truck red, garnet, scarlet, pink. All of them feel different. Here are a few more:

Being more aware of the full gamut of red’s possibilities and being more sensitive to how you feel about them is a good first step. But I think we need to go further. To do that, you need to understand and be thinking about the three qualities of colour that make Mahogany, for example, different from Dusty Rose.

Any one colour can be described with just three characteristics: hue, saturation, and luminance. That’s it. With these three handles, we can describe (and then control) any colour.

Hue is what we normally think of as colour. When we say “it’s green” or “it’s red,” we’re talking about hue, though not with any real nuance.

Saturation is how intense that hue is, as in bright green or dull green. In the grid above, Candyapple is much more saturated than Dusty Rose; it’s more intense.

And luminance is how we describe that hue in terms of how light or dark it is. Dusty Rose (see above) is a very light red in terms of luminance, and Mahogany is very dark. But either Dusty Rose or Mahogany could also be a little warmer or cooler (a shift in hue) until they become a different “colour” entirely or more or less saturated. How you feel about any combination of hue, saturation, or luminance, will differ, and so too will how the colours work together.

When you stop calling colours by their popular names and become more able to identify them according to the qualities of hue, saturation, and luminance, you’ll be better able to control any or all of those qualities and better control how the colours in your image work together and make the photograph feel. This leads me to the third idea: control.

3. Become more controlling with colour.

When you become more sensitive to how colours contribute to the feel or the messaging of a photograph, and you gain a growing sense of the qualities of those colours, you have the ability to control them in the photograph. “What should I do to the colour in this image?” isn’t a helpful question, but “How could I change the hue, saturation, or luminance in areas of my image to change how they work together?” is a great question. And any photo manipulation tool worth its salt, like Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom, has tools to give you that specific control.

Once you understand the qualities of colour in terms of hue, saturation, and luminance (HSL), you can use the HSL tools to push them around, making certain colours warmer or cooler (hue), brighter or less intense (saturation), and/or lighter or darker (luminance). Here are some examples using the HSL panel in Adobe Lightroom.

There’s much more, of course. If you understand how colours complement each other, you can control the colour contrast or depth by gently nudging these tools one way or the other. If you understand, for example, how cyan contrasts more with orange than it does with yellow, you could use HSL tools to either nudge your cyans toward warmer blues (like violet, which complements yellow) or nudge your yellows toward orange.

Or, if you understand what makes colours work in harmony rather than in tension with each other, you can use the HSL tools to reduce that tension or visual competition by making one colour slightly brighter or more saturated while making other colours slightly darker or desaturated.

There is a lot to know about colour, and if some of what I just described feels a little fuzzy to you, that’s OK. It tells you there’s some room to grow in your use of colour, and I hope to help with that. But just these three ideas alone have changed my personal understanding of colour and of my own photographs, as well as the possibilities that development tools like Lightroom (or others) can offer to make my photographs more expressive—and more mine. I think it can do the same for you.

I’ve created something for you, and tempted as I am to show you now, I don’t want to overwhelm you. So next week I’ll share a 20-minute video for you that explores in greater detail the idea of the photographer’s voice and how your choices with devices like colour can help you create single images and bodies of work that get you closer to that voice. There’s more, too. As I said, I’ve been hard at this for a year, not just as part of my growth as a photographer but also in hopes that I can help you take some of your next steps as you continue learning to make images that aren’t only good, but truly your own.

For the Love of the Photograph,
David

The enigmatic Cat in the Hat once told us that “there is no one alive who is you-er than you.” The less fictional Miles Davis reminds us (as I tried to do two weeks ago in this article) that this is true but that it takes some time to arrive at, that it can take a long time to play, or—as a photographer—to shoot like yourself.

But how? Personal projects, or photographing in series or bodies of work, can help you get to be the kind of photographer who “shoots like yourself” in a more focused way than any other approach I’ve ever come across. Sure, no one is you-er than you, but does it show in your work? Whether it does or not is a result of the choices you make, and I believe bodies of work help you get there.

A body of work is more than a single image. And it’s more than just a collection of single images, which for many photographers is often just a compilation of greatest hits more than it is a cohesive set of images intended to say (or explore) something specific.

A body of work is not “here are the 24 best images I made last year,” so much as it is “here are 24 photographs about circus clowns (or, you know, whatever).”

A body of work hangs on a theme or an idea. It has a through-line, and it does in multiple images what one image can’t. It says more. And over time, these bodies of work become part of the photographer’s voice. They are a way to help discover that voice and a way that voice gets expressed.

Shifting your focus from making single images—which is necessary in the beginning as you learn your craft—to making bodies of work instead is a huge step forward for most photographers.

It was for me. It changed everything for me and is one of those milestones I look back on and see as a turning point.

The pursuit of bodies of work forces us to be more intentional and less purely reactive; it allows us to take more time and become more thoughtful. Bodies of work allow us to see more and to say more. If the single image is a great lyric, a body of work is the whole song, or even a great album. It’s a bigger experience.

Bodies of work force us to go deeper and allow us to make the kind of photographs that can only be made from that depth of familiarity with our subject. That depth gives us more to say about a subject and the kind of knowledge that allows us to approach the subject more creatively to make not only a strong series, but stronger single images. 

Learning to make bodies of work will help you learn to “shoot like yourself.”

To give you some inspiration and a sense of what I mean, I want to introduce you to three photographers who create bodies of work or who work in series really well. Because of this longer exploration of ideas and themes, these photographers have created work that is distinctly their own. Out of this commitment to series, work has emerged not only stunning single images but visual voices that are uniquely their own.

Valda Bailey

Valda Bailey is an English photographer who works in the abstract and the expressive. I find her work deeply moving, and I want to suggest you look at and respond to this series called Lakeside ( shown above). The through-line is clear; it contains only nine images, but look how well they work together to express that one simple idea. She doesn’t hit the same note over and over but instead creates a rhythm.

Valda’s series Blossom Blizzard does this as well. A clear theme is expressed better in eight images than it could ever be in just one. And all of her work has a cohesive aesthetic. Even just the way Valda uses colour has a harmony to it; these are intentional decisions and give Valda what we would recognize as her voice.

Sam Abell

Sam Abell is an American photographer whose work has appeared frequently in National Geographic. There’s a good chance you already know his work, though you might not know his name. In Sam’s context, a body of work is called a photo essay. It’s a series, but it has more than just a thematic through-line; it includes a narrative thread as well. Take a look at his galleries to get a sense of how all of his series have a similar (but not identical) aesthetic or look. Specifically, take a look at his Newfoundland series.

Like all the photographers who work for the famous yellow rectangle, Sam doesn’t just show up to a place and make a few images. He lingers. He gets to know the place. He doesn’t think only in single images but in how they can all work together. This approach forces him to make more choices than single-image work does, and in the end—while his series do work together really well—his single images are also stronger for it.

Edward Burtynsky

Edward Burtynsky is a great example of a photographer whose voice is recognizable in both what he says photographically and how he says it. He has a voice you can’t mistake for anyone else. Burtynsky photographs industrial landscapes—the hand of man on the environment. He’s photographed salt pans in India, quarries in Italy, massive log booms in Canada, and ship breaking yards in Bangladesh, among many other subjects. All his work hangs on this one larger theme, and within that, on smaller themes like Water, Oil, or Quarries. And all of it is staggeringly beautiful.

Look at a handful of Burtynsky prints, and you’ll learn to recognize his work anywhere. His use of pattern, scale, and colour has a harmony to it that’s impossible to miss. See more of Burtysnky’s work on his website here or in any of his extraordinary books.

Having your work recognized is not the point. The point is making stronger photographs because you’ve chosen to go deeper on fewer subjects and to make intentional choices about what is and isn’t “you.”

As a photographer, there’s a time to be all over the map, but eventually, you will benefit from making stronger choices about what “shooting like yourself” really means. And though it may sound like it, this isn’t creatively confining—quite the opposite, in fact. The freedom that comes from working within the constraints of a personal project is extraordinary. Knowing what is and isn’t “your jam,” as they say, is liberating. Challenging, too, but that’s where flow has always come. That’s where creative people have always done their best work.

One of the highest compliments I think any photographer can receive is, “I knew that photograph was yours the moment I saw it, even before I saw your name.” That’s when you know you’re shooting like yourself.

That’s when you know you’ve found your voice. Although, for me, this isn’t something I found or “discovered,” but the result of work in which I made choices that increasingly felt like me. I believe that voice is chosen, and committing to shooting bodies of work has made me clearer about which subjects fit me and which do not, and it made me much more aware of my visual tastes and preferences.

What do you think? Have you noticed how some photographers work in series to explore a theme, story, or idea? Do you have a favourite photographer whose work is so “them” that it consistently stands out as theirs? Have you tried working in series and found that your work gets better and more “you”? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

For the Love of the Photograph,
David

“Sometimes,” observed the great jazz musician Miles Davis, “you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.”

Sometimes? I think he was graciously understating it. For most of us, learning to shoot like ourselves is not only a long journey but a necessarily winding one.

When we first begin to make photographs and take our first steps towards learning to shoot like ourselves, most of us do a lot of emulation. As best as I can tell, all artists in all disciplines do this as a necessary part of their growth. We see what others have done to good effect; something in their work resonates with us (it must or we’d never notice it, much less try to imitate it), and we try it on for size.

Over the years, it’s possible you’ve tried on a lot of techniques, looking for a fit, searching for your style. Some have fit nicely and you’ve adopted them into what is becoming more and more your voice. Others, well, not so much. The white vignette and over-the-top HDR phase usually doesn’t last long, and for this, we can thank Ernst Haas and all his saints.

Style, or what I prefer to call voice, is not easy to come to.

In part, I think that’s because we’re looking for it when it’s not as much a thing that is found as something we create—something we choose. It begins with emulation. If it can be tidily carved into stages, that is stage one, and it probably shouldn’t be rushed. In fact, most beginners would do well to spend some quality time here and go deeper with emulation (without being self-conscious or ashamed of copying) before moving on too quickly.

When it comes to both learning your craft and finding your voice within it, the more influences you have, the better.

And the more you play with those influences and the more combinations you can experiment with, the better you’ll be able to make choices about what is and is not “you.”

Imagine you walk into a store to buy a new outfit. From top to bottom, you’d need a shirt, jeans, a belt, socks, and shoes. You’ll try a lot of things on. Some will fit, some won’t. Some combinations will be fantastic; others won’t work together at all. Some would look great on someone else, but not on you. And some, well, some combinations fit great but they do more than just fit—they also just feel right. They feel like you.

Fit is not everything. When you emulate the work of others and try on every new technique you come across, you’re looking for fit, but also more than fit. You’re looking for resonance. You’re looking for you in the combinations. As a photographer, style is not found in one choice but in many. It’s created by a mash-up of many influences and techniques.

But while having a unique style is a valuable goal, I think we can do better. In acknowledging the long road to “playing like yourself,” Miles Davis isn’t encouraging us to find our style; he’s encouraging us to find ourselves. Or rather, he’s making a case for finding our voice.

What’s the difference? Style is expression. It’s all external. It’s what we see. Voice goes further. Voice is not only how we express something, but what we express. Voice includes what we say.

Style can be somewhat accidental; sometimes we just settle on a set of techniques and preferences and we camp out there. Sometimes we’re just lazy and never move on from what is comfortable, even easy. No matter what we photograph, we employ the same techniques with the camera and the same treatments in post-production. If it’s distinct enough, someone might say they like your “style.” But it is possible to have style and never say anything specific with your photographs. It’s possible to have a style and for all the pieces to fit, but for that style to lack harmony with who you really are.

Voice is a better metaphor. Voice includes what we say. Style is only one part of voice.

So why does this matter? Why split hairs about this? Well, I suspect if you sat down with Miles Davis, he’d tell you playing for a long time does not automatically result in playing like yourself. I suspect he’d tell you there was a lot of conscious decision-making involved and that discovering how Miles Davis made music was about much more than how he played the trumpet.

Miles Davis didn’t find himself only in the playing; he found himself in all the decisions he made about what he played (and what he didn’t play), who he played with, why he played in the first place, and—yes—also how he played. See what I mean?

Look to the photographers who have had distinct voices. They’re all recognizable without seeing so much as a photo credit. But it’s more than that: they’re all saying something. They all have a unique point of view and a unique way of expressing it. It’s hard to mistake a Sally Mann photograph for someone else’s. Steve McCurry photographs specific subjects in a very specific way that is identifiably “Steve McCurry.” Sam Abell. Vivian Maier. Saul Leiter. Diane Arbus. Diane Arbus is a great example of a photographer with a distinct voice that comes through in what she photographs and how.

When you speak about a photographer with a distinct voice (assuming you have some familiarity with their work), you find yourself saying, “Oh, that’s the photographer who…” and you can complete the sentence with what they photograph and how. That’s much more than style. It’s deeper. Style is the surface expression of a deeper substance. It’s a choice, or series of choices, that can only meaningfully come after first making decisions about what you want to say.

At some point, your next step as a photographer is to move past emulation and the trying on of every technique and trend in the hopes of finding what fits and discovering and making intentional choices about what is truly you. That’s in how you express yourself photographically, but it’s also in what you express. We can only point our cameras at so many things and explore so many ideas if we hope for any depth in our work—anything more than passing familiarity with our subjects or any of the insights that only come with time. The more depth, familiarity, and insight you hope for, the fewer subjects you will photograph.

Over the coming weeks, I’m going to begin a conversation about voice. I want to make a case for greater depth in your work. For more intentional decisions about not only what your photographs look like (the style) but what they’re about (the substance), and for the value in finding not only what fits but what is truly you.

Sometimes you have to shoot a long time to be able to shoot like yourself, but there are choices you can make as you do so that give you a better chance than merely hoping to stumble across yourself along the way.

The first—and necessary—stage of our photographic lives is often spent making images that are more and more like what others have done. We spend the rest of that journey (with the occasional detour back to emulations to learn and explore) doing the opposite as we try to make work that is more and more like us and less and less like any one of the influences we initially learned from.

Are you open to an exercise?

Look at the best of the work you’ve made in the last two or three years. Don’t look much more than four or five years because you want to get a sense of the photographer you are now, not the one you once were. We all grow and change, and the point of this is to get a better sense of who you are now.

Now look at that work and ask yourself where the commonalities are in the very best of that work (by which I mean the work you are proudest of; the work you most resonate with as your own). What does that work have in common in terms of themes, ideas, or subjects? What’s it about? And what choices do you most often make in terms of the look of the images? What clues can you find about yourself and your preferences in that work? Maybe you prefer certain optics, or perhaps it’s certain points of view, or maybe you lean heavily toward specific kinds of compositions or colour palettes. What do you think I would find there if I looked over your shoulder?

If you choose to spend the time on that exercise, I’d love to hear from you. What did you discover about your tastes and preferences? What threads have you uncovered about who you are as a photographer? I know some of you will say you discovered you’re all over the map, but try to go deeper.

None of us are equally interested in all things; none of us are without preferences for certain colours or the tools of our craft that make images that look and feel a certain way. The first step might be being more sensitive to those and owning them unapologetically.

Your voice will be found in what makes you different from others, not in what makes you the same.

For the Love of the Photograph,
David

Your biggest challenges, the ones that stand in the way of your best photographs, are not technical; they are creative. I’d put money on that being true for almost everyone who reads this. Once you’ve learned the fundamentals, the challenges you have won’t be solved with your tools so much as by your thinking.

When you look at the work you’re creating and wonder why it’s not what you imagined or hoped, it’s probably not your camera. And when it all comes together and your photographs are more than just perfect but personal and even poetic—when they’re not only visual but visceral—that too is the fruit of your thinking.

More creative thinking results in more creative photographs.

This is all the more important when you remember that seeing is not a function of the eyes alone; perception is a function of the mind. How we see, even what we see, is in our thinking. I was reminded of this recently while reading an interview with photographer Stephen Shore, who said, “It seems to me that a good photographer is a combination of two things: one is interesting perceptions, and the other is an understanding of how the world is translated by a camera into a photograph.”

If we’re willing students, I believe the camera teaches us both.

At a recent lecture series, I met a woman who introduced herself as someone who photographed as a way to see—and not to miss—what she had overlooked. I told her she was as much a poet as a photographer, and she laughed and brushed it off, saying, “No, I’m just old.” Maybe. But not everyone who lives long also lives so wide awake, so keen not to overlook it all. Not to miss anything.

Having open eyes should not be mistaken for having an open mind. One of the reasons the craft of photography is so powerful and holds such allure for many of us is that the camera helps us see and think differently. Doing so makes us more awake and alive.

“Interesting perceptions,” Stephen Shore says. These are a matter of individuality, not groupthink. We don’t arrive at them by edging ourselves closer to the crowd, but instead by learning to see what is overlooked, even if that’s an overlooked way of thinking about something common. After all, it’s all been done, and that makes everything a little more common. The strongest photographs will not be those with a subject that was previously unphotographed, but those that are photographed from an interesting point of view. And they will be made by those who think about the world in interesting ways.

So when my new friend said she photographs to see what has been overlooked, I don’t think it’s so much that she’s never seen a shell on the beach, but that she’s never noticed one in such a way that she truly gives it her attention and consideration. The camera helps with this because it begs us—even forces us—to make choices if we’re to transform that shell in a photograph from “something pretty” to something “pretty interesting,” as my friend Dave Brosha says.

To make an interesting photograph of the shell on the beach requires us to think differently about it. To see it for more than it first appears to be. Maybe that’s an unexpected juxtaposition. Maybe it’s the light. Maybe it’s a vision of that shell only the camera can make possible as it interprets light, space, and time differently than we can. Maybe it’s as a symbol or metaphor.

Or, as Edward Weston so beautifully put it, “This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock.”

To do that requires we think of rocks as more than “just a rock.” French American painter Robert Henri implored his students to “paint the flying spirit of the bird, not its feathers.” To do that requires that we see more than just the feathers—that we think differently about the bird. And when American Magnum Photographer David Alan Harvey begs us not to shoot what it looks like but to “shoot what it feels like,” we had better feel something about it, whatever it is towards which we’re pointing our lens.

My cameras have taught me to dig deeper within and look longer at the outside world in hopes of finding what’s more than on the surface. They have taught me (are still teaching me, really) to give everything a second look and a second consideration.

Interesting perceptions come from photographers who themselves are interesting. Or perhaps this is better: interesting perceptions come from photographers who are more interested—curious and unwilling to overlook even the smallest thing which we might otherwise have glanced over in our search for something more obvious.

The best photographs do not capture the obvious but show us the thing we might have missed; they show us the obvious in a way that is anything but. Weston’s Pepper No. 30 does this. It’s just a pepper, yet so much more than a pepper.

Weston’s Pepper No. 30 does more than show us a pepper; it also shows us Weston. It pulls back the veil a little on a man with interesting perceptions. I sometimes wonder if it did the same for Edward himself, showing him something new about himself and the way he saw the world. Weston’s pepper might even show us something of ourselves as we respond to the photograph in the same way a Rorschach test might when what we see within the inkblots is something more than an inkblot. What do you see in those sensual curves? I’ll bet it’s more than a pepper.

Perhaps this explains some of the attachment we feel to our cameras when, having helped us open our eyes and changed our thinking, they become more than just a camera. On my best days, my camera feels like an extension of me. This certainly explains why we feel so strongly about making photographs if, like me, you feel more awake and alive when doing so. 

The camera asks us to look again and enter into a more interesting dialogue with the world.

My cameras have helped me not only accept my own view of the world but expand it. They’ve helped me come to grips with and to value my “interesting perceptions,” which is hard to do for any of us who think and see differently in a culture that encourages us to compare ourselves with others and to grind down the bits of ourselves that are “weird.”

Interesting perceptions come from within. They are expressed (and often learned) with the camera in hand, but they come from someplace else—an inner place where all our influences mingle and combine. They beg us for more influences. And it’s not a stretch to suggest that the best thing we can do to think differently is to expose ourselves to different thinking rather than the echo chambers that encourage more of the same ideas, galvanizing the tastes we already have. 

Interesting perceptions come from the labyrinthical parts of ourselves that are hard to map but easy to hide if we’re uncomfortable with them, though that would be a real shame because it is precisely the bits that make us weird that also make us interesting. Those are what we most need to see (and about which we need to think differently) if we’re to make photographs that are more interesting. But more importantly, if we’re to get to the end of our lives and not find that we ourselves were the one thing we most overlooked.

For the Love of the Photograph,
David.

PS – Want more like this? I send these articles out every two weeks to photographers around the world who want to improve their craft and explore their creativity and I’d love to include you. Tell me where to send it and I’ll send you a copy of my best-selling eBook Make Better Photographs, as well bi-weekly articles, first-glimpse monographs of my new work, and very occasional news of resources to help you keep moving forward in this craft we love.

“Each and every one of your emails inspire and motivate me to want to jump right out of my chair away from my computer and shoot for the love of it . Thank you David.” – Millie Brown