Photography

I had the assignment done last week, but I was a bit busy and I could not put it out. Enough excuses, the assignment from the list extracted from Harold Davis article series Becoming a More Creative Photographer, sixth assignment, or making the ordinary visually appealing Your assignment: Pick something that you’ve looked at often, and that you think is visually boring. Now, let go of your preconceptions about your subject. Study it carefully. Find something you haven’t observed before about it, and make an interesting image using this new aspect of your subject. ...

This week assignment from list extracted from Harold Davis article series Becoming a More Creative Photographer, is the fifth assignment, or taking pictures without your camera. Your assignment: Without a camera, observe a scene closely. What abstract pattern or patterns can the scene be boiled down to visually? Staring up, light pours in trough the window softly fading away. The ceiling beams gently guide it through the room space. I am trying to think what are the basic visual patterns in which I could decompose the scene. Maybe the first one would be the window acting as the vanishing point for the main beam and the angled ceiling. It looks pretty simple as a visual construct. However, if I had to choose one abstract pattern that remains consistent and powers the image across the scene, that pattern would be line repetition. It starts on the window. Repeating lines define it. Beam lines emanate from it. They define the basic resting guidelines for the parallel and perpendicular lines to rest and repeat. Even when the scene gets abruptly interrupted, the guiding and recursively repeating lines emerge again with slanted generative angles. In case you wonder, yes, I just took the camera after I finished the assignment so you could see what I was staring at :) ...

Going down the list of assignments extracted from Harold Davis article series Becoming a More Creative Photographer, the fourth assignment challenges you to post-process it like you mean it. Your assignment: Shoot a commonplace object with digital post-processing specifically in mind. Using your favorite image editing software, transform the photo of the commonplace object into something new and abstract. This was a tough one. I am still not sure I got there, but I took it as a change to get out of the usual comfort zone. Yes, color. No, monochrome. Yes, post-processed till you cannot tweak any more knobs to get the image you want. If the previous assignments got me warmed up, this could be soul crushing if I took it too seriously. Choosing the picture was actually easy. After a week of scratching my head, I remembered an itch. A snap I took while passing by Zürich back in June. I knew I wanted to do something with it, but never got my head around it. Monochrome did not make justice to the moment I released the shutter. The shoot of a bridal store front got my eye, memories, and imagination. It was bold. It was eye-catching. It was full of color. It was sitting there, ignoring and defying the sobriety that surrounded it. It also had another ethereal property: if you discretely check the people walking by it, almost every street-walker tried to hide their furtive glances. There was no option. This moment was the image I had to post-process. Monochrome was not going to cut it. It will lose the magnetism that challenged your gaze. Also, it was way out there on the left field of the comfort zone. So there I went and start post-processing trying to turn it into that giant magnet that trapped people’s imagination while walking by. Yes, I have to admit that I may have failed turning it into an abstract image, but this was exciting new territory and I guess I could not cover it in a single shoot. So, I just sat in front of the digital darkroom and post-process that moment like I mean it. ...

Another week, another photography assignment extracted from Harold Davis article series Becoming a More Creative Photographer. The third assignment reads as follows: Your assignment: Wait until you are feeling no inspiration and stuck in a rut. Choose a single lens, set it at a single focal length, and use aperture-preferred metering to choose one f-stop. Start taking photos. I guarantee that you will be surprised with what you come up with. This exercise is a great way to reinvigorate your photography generally and get out of a rut. ...

[Halsman defines creativity and imagination as Une Tournure D’Esprit in his book The Creation of Photographic Ideas.]({{ ref “/posts/une-tournure-desprit.md” >}} “Una Tournure D’esperit”) He also proposed a set of rules to help developed your photographic creativity. Some target your logic thinking, some target your unconscious. I was tempted to start practicing Halsman rules, but they felt a bit daunting and I was a bit lost on where to start. Where they written in order? Should I just focus on one of the rules? Should I stop thinking about it or just stop thinking about it and let it permeate for a while? Hence, I decided to dig a bit more around just to see if I could make my mind about what path to take. ...