I often find myself in a situation where I’m standing or looking out at an incredible landscape. The word incredible not just comes with the territory, but because I’m usually shooting at sunrise or sunset when the sun is lower on the horizon, and the light is much softer, warmer, and with longer shadows…your best friend.

Over the years I will also find myself in a situation where I’m able to shoot a landscape for the sheer reason of showing a beautiful vast area; a true landscape.

So, what do I mean by a pure landscape? According to the dictionary, the definition of a landscape is: “All the visible features of an area, or countryside, or land, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.”

Further, Wikipedia states that ” Many landscape photographers show little or no human activity in their photos, striving to attain pure, unsullied landscapes that are devoid of human influence, using instead subjects such as strongly defined landforms, weather, and ambient light.”

I don’t always fall under that variety of photographers. My background is in painting and design, with a BA in the field of Journalism; I’m a storyteller. So, while following the purist ways, which is one genre, I’m also looking for a way to editorialize, which is another genre.

By adding a person, my landscape becomes more of a story. The viewer will ask why is that person there, what’s he doing there, etc., and when the viewer discovers my person or object, I’ve included a touch of Gestalt. Simply said, the more things the viewer discovers in our photography, the more he or she will stick around. Isn’t that just what we want him to do?

In the two photos, I took out the man diving so you’ll see a landscape. In the other photo, I left him in so now it’s more editorial. Still a landscape in my opinion, but now there’s a story to it.

Now, I realize that the ‘purist’, the photographer that shoots landscapes for the sake of landscapes, would have a big problem with adding a story to his/her photo, and that’s perfectly OK with me; a true landscape is just that.

Hopefully, there’s room for both images in the scheme of things.

In my online classes with the BPSOP, and in my personal “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around our planet My fellow photographers are always saying that they just couldn’t do anything about that person that shows up in their photo; they’ll just take him/her out later.

What I usually say is that by adding that person or old beat-up car, or sailboat, you’re not hurting the photo…you just might be saving it. It may be what you’ve always thought, but try looking at things a little differently.

Visit my website at www.joebaraban.com, and check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come shoot some scale with me.

JoeB

I talk to my online classes with the BPSOP, and in my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct throughout the world about the importance of a gesture in your imagery; it’s one of the ways to create Visual Tension.

The actual definition of a gesture is “a movement of a part of the body, especially a hand or the head, to express an idea. It’s an action performed to convey one’s feelings.”

Visual Tension is generated when you stop an action, as in a gesture, and leave it uncompleted. I’m always on the lookout for someone using a gesture either while talking or even pointing. That said, I don’t like to take photos of people pointing unless I have positioned them close to the edge of the frame so they’re pointing out. Tha way the viewer doesn’t know what they’re pointing out.

There is another type of gesture that I also like to talk about and especially in a photograph, and that’s a non-human gesture. Non-human gestures can also portray an emotion or communicate an idea.

A list of non-human gestures would include contrast, a recurrence of objects, color, depth, shadows, light, and the element of surprise. Trees, waves in the ocean, flowers, and even rock formations can portray a sense of Gesture. The one idea that connects these objects and is usually necessary to show them in their reality is the use of elegance or grace.

The use of color or light to create a non-human expression is an unwritten language different than the intentional movement created by man or other living creatures. This demonstration of visual expression can be a complex form of communicating ideas and emotions to the viewer. The use of Light to create a non-human gesture can be more difficult since Light is so fleeting that it can come and go in a blink of the eye. When you can anticipate this moment, or quick enough to react, it can imply a sense of movement that will embody the essence of an object.

When you can combine these non-human gestures, with any of the elements of visual design and composition on my Artist Palette I refer to it’s a great way to find that elusive “OMG” photo we all strive to take.

Here are a few examples of non-human gesture:

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Visit my website at www.joebaraban.com, and check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime.

JoeB

Before reading this post, for all of you that have taken my part I and II classes, the school is bringing back my Gestalt class for a month, starting the first week in May. Here’s the link: https://bpsop.com/courses-1/

When I critique one of my student’s photos in my online class with the BPSOP, and also in my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around the planet, I’ll talk about what they saw versus what they would have like to have seen.

Most photographers that I see (close-up) in action walk up to something, some person, or someplace, and bring up their camera to their eye and “take’ a picture. In other words, they take a picture of what they see. What I want my online students that take my classes is to ‘make’ a picture not of what they see, but what they would like to see.

In the fifty years I’ve been shooting I have rarely seen what I want. I guess I’m just too impatient to wait around for something I want to shoot. What I’m getting at is that I shoot what I’d like to see.

In other words, If I see a group of chairs lined up against a wall and one or two of them are making the overall composition un-balanced, I have no problem going up to them and arranging them the way I’d like to photograph them.

Now, there are those out there that call themselves”purists”, and would never think about moving something. On the other hand, those same purists have no problem going back to their computers and adding a lot of post-processing, aka HDR for one.

I can’t think of anything as “un-pure” as taking three exposures and combining them into one photo..but that’s just me. In all these years I’ve never had to do that and my photos come out pretty damn good. Btw, I know people that do this.

If I see some ordinary items one would see while being served breakfast, I’ll fool around with them until I see something worthy of shooting as in the photo above. To me, that’s being an artist, and make no mistake my fellow photographers we are all artists that have chosen a camera as our medium of choice.

And so I leave you with this, a camera on a tripod is just the same as a blank canvas on an easel.

Visit my new website at www.joebaraban.com, and check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come paint with me sometime.

JoeB

Before reading this post, for all of you that have taken my part I and II classes, the school is bringing back my Gestalt class for a month, starting the first week in May. Here’s the link: https://bpsop.com/courses-1/

When I was a young kid, the family got our first television. We would all gather around it mesmerized and completely taken in by this new form of entertainment. One of the shows we use to watch on Saturday nights was a show called The Shadow.

I don’t know about you, but I like people to look at and enjoy my photography. In order to do that I need to make my images contain enough visual interest to keep them around.

Like all of us, visual input is a part of everyday life, and as photographers, it’s our prime objective to present this visual information in a way that takes control of what the viewer sees when looking at our imagery.

We want to make the viewer an active participant when looking at our photos. For example, the more ways we can have the viewer move around our composition, while at the same time leaving and entering the frame the longer they will stick around. The more things we can get the viewer to discover while moving around the frame will also keep them around longer.

Think about putting people in your images; it’s a known fact that people like to see people in photos. Editorialize your pictures, in other words, have them ask questions, tell a story; which by the way is one of the definitions of editorial.

This is what engaging the viewer is all about. I primarily think about incorporating all the basic elements of visual design, especially color, and this is as good as it gets in keeping the viewer around for at last six seconds.

That might not seem like a lot, but consider that some television commercials can be as little as ten to thirty seconds of constant motion, so in that regard looking at a still photograph for six seconds is a big deal.

All this is a big part of what I teach online in my BPSOP online classes, and also in my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct all over the world.

So, my fellow photographers, whatever you do do it on the path less traveled. Don’t follow any rules you’ve been taught to follow. Rules hinder the creative juices, and you’ll only wind up going down the well traveled road to mediocrity.

Visit my website at joebaraban.com, and check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime.

JoeB

Degas once said, ” Painting is easy when you don’t know how, very difficult when you do.”.

I find this to be the basis for writing this post. You see, I teach an online class with the BPSOP, and I also conduct my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops around out hopefully around the planet.

Most of the people that have taken both online classes have taken at least one of my workshops; some as many a ten. As their eye develops, and they’re using the right side of their brain to compose more and more, frustration begins to creep into their thought process.

They tend to over analyze everything and I can tell you from years of experience teaching, doing that is not in your best interest.

I show people how to use the artist palette I give them that instead of pigment, there are the basic elements of Visual Design: Color, Shape, Pattern, Texture, Form, Balance, and the most important of them all…Line.

When I say over-analyze, I mean they begin seeing design elements that are not really there except for in their imagination. They get so tense that they almost become paralyzed and wind up either not shooting anything at all, or shooting something that winds up being deleted on the computer monitor.

So, my fellow photographers, when you go out shooting it needs to be fun and not something you overthink. Making visual mistakes comes with the territory, and everyone makes them…me included.

Visit my new website at www.joebaraban.com, and check out my upcoming workshops at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime.

JoeB