I saw a fork, but what else did I see?
Here’s another of my favorite quotes, that may have been written long ago, but I’ll always remember it being sung by an old friend named Bo Diddley. The name of the song was, “You can’t judge a book by looking at the cover”.
In the early eighties, I was on the board of the Houston Art Director Club, and my job that year was to find and provide the entertainment for the year’s award show. I thought long and hard and was told to look up agencies that represented well-known artists. On the list of possibles that fit into my budget was Bo Diddley. I couldn’t believe it!!!
I called and we worked out the details and I couldn’t believe that Bo was actually going to perform for our gala. I picked him up at the airport, took him to lunch, and stayed with him the entire day right up to the time he went on. He was soooooo cool!!!
Ok, I might be digressing a tad, but there’s a method to my madness, and here’s how it applies to the present-day task of making pictures.
So many students that take my online class with the BPSOP, and the ones that attend my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshop will walk up to something and just start shooting…blindly so to speak. They just look at it with the left side of their brain and just see the obvious. If it’s a tree, then they just see a tree. If it’s railroad tracks, then that’s all they see. If it’s a fountain with a naked baby in it spitting water out of its mouth, then that’s all they see, and that’s how they judge it; by only looking at the cover.
When I look at a tree, I look at it with the right side of my brain…the creative side. I see the negative space that defines the branches, I see the texture provided by the bark and any shapes that might be hidden between the leaves. I move around it to see how the light may backlight the leaves, and look for the important shadows that are being created and laying on the ground.
If I’m looking at railroad tracks, I see patterns created by the ties, texture created by the rocks, and a Vanishing Point I can use to move the viewer around my composition. If I’m looking at a naked baby spitting water into the fountain it’s sitting in, I imagine the possibility of creating a silhouette with backlit water spewing out of his mouth.
My point is to not just walk up and judge your subject by looking at its cover. Open the book and reads what’s inside.
Visit my website at www.joebaraban.com and check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog.
JoeB
