What else do you see besides a window?
Here’s a quote written by Marcel Proust, a French Novelist that lived in the late 19th century and early 20th. In my English Literature class we touched on his writings, but it wasn’t until I started teaching online with the BPSOP, and conducting my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops that I happened upon one of his quotes. It’s a quote that has stuck with me and one that I constantly tell my fellow photographers that say they can’t find anything worthwhile to shoot anymore.
Proust said, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”
When I think about the part that says “new eyes”, my Artist Palette immediately comes to mind. I teach my fellow photographers how to use the elements of visual design and composition to create stronger photos. We work on “making pictures” that include Texture, Pattern, Line, Shape, Form, Balance, Perspective, Vanishing Points, and Negative Space. It’s a lot, but they all fit comfortably on a palette.
Before students have taken my online class or my workshop, they’ve gone out and photographed what they saw, or have photographed what others have before them. The problem is that they never thought about “seeing past first impressions”. A tree is just a tree to them. They are of the mindset that looking at a label is fine, never mind that they’ve haven’t a clue as to what’s inside.
I had a student that lives on a ranch in Montana. She told me that there was nothing left to photograph, and was ready to give up photography. I had her create a path or trail if you will, that surrounded the house, the barn, farm machinery, the pens for the animals, and the fence line. I told her to follow the path exactly the same way each time, going past the exact same things each time. The first couple of times I just wanted her to take pictures of whatever she saw. As expected, her photos lacked substance, and meaning. It was obvious that she had become bored with her ranch.
Then I told her to take her ‘(imaginary) Artist Palette’ with her and look for the elements that were on it. When you go past the fence, forget that it’s a fence. instead, think of it as a way to frame one of the other buildings, Think of the areas between the posts as a Shape…a long rectangle that’s created by the Negative space that surrounds and defines it. Look at the texture, and try getting “up close and personal” to it. Image the top and bottom of the fence as converging lines that move the viewer around the frame…maybe to one of the structures. Most important, I told her to walk the path at different times of the day. Walk it at sunrise, the middle of the day and sunset to see how the light can play a huge part. How about side lighting the sides of the bard, to emphasis the texture. Then, I told her to go the other way around to see things completely different.
As I knew it would happen, she started seeing things she never knew were there before. It was a true “voyage of discovery” that she was able to see with her “new eyes”.
So my fellow photographers, you don’t have to travel to take good photos. Sometimes you only need to look in your own backyard.
Visit my new website at: www.joebaraban.com, and check out my workshop schedule.
JoeB
