A new way of looking at the ordinary.
This is my ninth post in my series I call “Did It Do It”.
In my online classes at the PPSOP, and in my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around the planet, I show fellow photographers how to incorporate the elements of Visual Design and composition into their thought process, and as a result, they’re able to take their photos what I refer to as “up a notch”. I also give them my “did it do it” list which is a set of guidelines I’ve been thinking about for the majority of my career. These are not rules, since I don’t like nor do I follow any rules that others before me have put out there to create mediocre photographers.
In this new post, I want to talk about looking at new ways to photograph ordinary ideas. During my forty-five year career as a corporate and advertising photographer, I was always asked by an Art Director (who was told by a client) to take a photo of an incredible ordinary idea. To be sure, it wasn’t ordinary to the powers that be; quite the contrary, it was ground breaking to them. To be able to live with myself, I always took it as a challenge to come up with a new way of showing the same old, same old.
I tell my students to “consider the scene and it’s outcome”. In other words take a step out of your body and right before you think that you’re ready to snap the shutter ask yourself if what you’re about to take is a photo that you would think is ordinary if someone had shown it to you. If there’s the slightest chance that it is, why take it? Why not look for a way to say the same thing, but in a new way; at least a way you haven’t seen before.
In the above photo, i was hired by the advertising agency that handled Texas Tourism. As is usually the case, they had a list of ideas (ordinary) that they once again wanted to portray in the ads they were running in local and national magazines. One of the ongoing ideas was to show a family of four enjoying the beaches on South Padre Island. It had been done so many times that even the Art Director” got nauseous at the mere thought of reliving it again.
There was no way I was going to take a photo of a mom, dad, son, and daughter enjoying the beach. I would have rather had my ‘eye’ carved out with a snow shovel. So what did I do? I went to the nearest tourist shop and found four colorful beach chairs. I set them up as though there were the family sitting there, only there was just one at the time. The rest of the family was implied. The client loved it!!!!!
Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com and check out my 2013 workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come shoot the un-ordinary with me sometime.
Don’t forget to send me a photo and question to: AskJoeB@gmail.com.
JoeB
