Rocky Nook Events

This lecture explores the nature of seeing with a camera. Photographers need to cultivate one important mindset: Learn to see how a camera sees. Well-known photographer Garry Winogrand once said, “I photograph to see what something will look like photographed.” Very good advice. The photographer’s eye and the camera lens see in very different ways. A photograph is the thing itself, more than it is a reference to the actual world.

The challenge that a photographer forever confronts is found in the dynamic interplay between seeing things for what they are compared to seeing things based on how you are. The biases, predilections, and points of view of the photographer are what makes an image interesting and invests it with meaning. On the other hand, the world exists apart from who you are. Great photographs have been made on the subject of one’s identity arising from autobiographical inquiry. And an equal number of powerful photographs have been made through direct perception of life itself. This forms the great lesson of photography. We can see how we see.

David distills the demands of seeing with a camera into five visual elements that you need to pay attention to when observing and photographing a scene. These photographic elements can help stimulate your observations and, when used effectively, can dramatically improve your photographs. Each of these components can be seen as ways of shaping your sense impressions and focusing your ideas into form.

To make all my decisions conscious, I started filling the pictures with attention.

—Photographer Stephen Shore

In this enjoyable and inspirational online workshop, you will learn to deepen your engagement with the world and discover a rich source of creativity within you through the act of taking pictures. Through a mindful approach to photography, participants explore the means and methods of making authentic images that are unique and compelling, that grow out of your own highly personal responses to the world. The act of paying attention—simultaneously to the scene itself, to your own vision, and to the mechanics of the camera—becomes a powerful tool for creative expression and for personal, artistic growth.

Through a combination of assignments distilled from David’s 40 years of teaching photography, instructive slide shows, and supportive critiques, participants combine imagination and visual perception with critical thought and careful analysis of visual communication through images. Learn to refine your vision and expand your creative possibilities.

Of all the magical elixirs that make up a successful photograph, composition is perhaps the most fundamental, and at the same time the most elusive. What makes a composition “good”? It’s hard to define exactly, but we instinctively recognize good composition when we see it. There is an undeniable emotional response when a composition resonates with and complements the subject matter of an image.

But traditional attempts to define “good” composition and to pass on rules for good compositional construction are often doomed to failure. The truth is, there are no hard and fast rules. Rules eliminate experimentation and spontaneity, which are crucial for creating compelling, dynamic, and exciting compositions. The best compositions contain an element of the unexpected. “Expect the unexpected!” is perhaps the only viable “rule” of composition.

To create exciting compositions, you must have a willingness to embrace serendipity and change as part of your artistic practice. After all, composition is a process, not a result. Edward Weston once wrote in his Daybooks that “to consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk” To this, Ansel Adams added that “You don’t make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.”

To resolve these two semi-paradoxes, in this hands-on workshop we will approach composition as an instance of open-ended two-dimensional design. Photographic exercises will start with simple shapes, such as lines and circles, and proceed through patterns and repetitions, and onwards to spirals, fractals, and abstractions. Workshop discussions will be intended to provoke thought about composition basics and continuing to enable individual integration of the process of composition into each participant’s creative practice.

This event has 3 classes and will have a maximum class of 12 students. The course will start on June 16th, the second class will be on June 23rd and the final class will be on June 30th. Each class will be two hours.