Posts Tagged ‘videos’
Bullet time.
This has been making the rounds. Makes you want your own highspeed camera, doesn’t it?
Taryn Simon on Crimes and Forbidden places
Another interesting video from TED. Who knew the CIA had such interesting abstract art hanging on the walls of their secret bunkers?
Dirty Inspiration
I love Mike Rowe. Don’t know him? He hosts Dirty Jobs on Discovery. It’s a fascinating series about the dirty jobs that help make this world run. (Kind of obvious based on the title, eh?). Mike talks about the episode he did surrounding the job of a sheep herder. It’s a captivating and animated story that he tells.
A few things are impressed upon me from this video: the ideas of anagnorisis and peripeteia and the notion that your preconceptions are wrong.
Now, anagnorisis and peripeteia don’t necessarily apply directly to photography, but work with me. Anagnorisis and peripeteia are literary devices. Wikipedia, the source everyone loves to hate, notes that anagnorisis means discovery in Greek. It’s the sudden realization of a situation. In Greek tragedies, it was often preceded by a peripatetic event, a sudden reversal or turning point in the story.
With me so far? Good.
In the journey to become a photographer, one makes mistakes. A lot of mistakes. You forget to focus. You forget your batteries. You forget that larger f-stops give you smaller depth of field. You know, simple mistakes that affect how you achieve the photo you’re going for. If you’re paying attention, you learn from these mistakes. You have your “ahha!” moment. The lightbulb flicks on just above your furrowed brow right as you make the mistake and you think, “I shouldn’t have done that!”
It’s that realization that you’ve made the mistake that’s important. But, not everything is a mistake. Many times it’s understanding that what you just did failed for some particular reason outside of your control and figuring out why. Another “ahha!” moment. Discovery. Sounds so simple, right?
Yes and no.
When I started shooting, I had a brand new camera in my hands, a bunch of book learning in my head, and my personal experience amounted to a photographic hill of beans. In other words, I was fresh off the boat and I knew it all. All I had to do was get the camera off automatic, twist a few dials, and my inner magician would appear, flashing the scene with The Light Fantastic, and I’d have amazing and emotionally charged photos.
Great concept. Reality left a little bit to be desired. Ok. That’s the understatement of the day. Blast! That’s when I begun to realize that there was something more to this than whacking the Easy Button and waiting for the benjamins to roll in. As Mike put it, I had a bit of anagnorisis and peripeteia on my chin.
Mike touches upon this idea of challenging your preconceptions. He’s right: what if it really is “Safety Third”? Think about that. It goes against your nature to even consider that. Right or wrong, what’s important here is that you make the leap between what you know is correct and true to what is sheer crazy talk. It’s this leap where the interesting ideas come from. I’ve often heard this as: when shooting with other photographers, if they start shooting something to their left, you start shooting to their right … because something interesting is being missed over there.
In the end, what it comes down to is this: we spend our moments looking at what we’re doing and testing ourselves in order figure out a better way to do it. If you’re good, you question yourself and your routines. If you’re better, you listen to those questions and do something with the answers.
Me? I’m going to go wipe these bloody bits of anagnorisis and peripeteia off my chin and find something right to shoot.
Louis Vuitton
It’s stuff like this that makes me want to quit being a professional computer geek and become a professional photographer. Lots of wonderful imagery in this.
Learning from Chase.
Back in 2007, Chase Jarvis gave a keynote address for the Photoshelter Town Hall describing some of the reasoning why he shoots what he does and some ideals that up and coming pros should strive for. I know the video is somewhat dated, Internet time-wise, but I still go back to this on occasion and review it.
Things I took away from this:
- I think one of the most interesting facts that I took away from this is that he often does entire shoots just for himself to keep building on his portfolio.
- Shoot things that you’ve never seen before. Chase watches the marketplace for the patterns being developed and then tries to step outside the pattern. Whether it’s using props in ways you normally wouldn’t see in marketing (like aiming a gun to someone’s head) or finding a different angle to shoot from, it’s something that differentiates you from everyone else.
- It takes lots of hard work to be successful at this. I couldn’t shoot to the degree that Chase does (20 hour days), but I can certainly do more than what I’m doing now.
- You have to have passion for what you’re shooting. If you don’t, it’s going to be difficult to be your best creatively. Make your own style. You need to carve out time to shoot those photos you have a passion for.
- One of the best and fastest ways to get a subject to do what you want is to show them exactly how it’s done by doing it yourself. You can see Chase doing this in the Ninja clip.
- Smoke machines add a weird, almost mystical, dimension to photos, especially when they’re used in conjunction with a strong back light. I need to get a smoke machine and play with that idea some.
- You need to be a part of the community. Networking. Collaborating. Photos don’t get made by one person.
- Nothing can replace the power of word-of-mouth when trying to get business.
It’s an interesting video no matter what. I encourage you to check it out, if only to watch the video clips within it. Or, just check out his youtube channel. I believe he has the individual ones posted there.
Joe McNally at Google
This is a great video! Joe is now one of my favorite photography authors thanks to The Moment it Clicks. He recently presented a talk at Google describing some of his work and some of the ideas discussed in the book. Definitely worth watching.