There’s a joke in the photographic community that if you want to make art, take photos in black and white.
Of course, color photography is just as fertile ground for creative expression as black and white, but why does black and white feel more “artistic” to so many people?
Read MoreIf you haven’t read Tom Wolfe’s book “The Painted Word” I urge you to grab a copy at once. He’s an incredible writer, and the book is short enough that you could probably finish it in a day or two.
In short, With the advent of photography, Painting had to become conceptual because it could no longer match Photography's depictions of physical spaces/scenes. With modernist art on to contemporary, the text of the statement *is* the art more than the painting is. Or at least, it is more important to the people who buy and sell art.
That isn’t to say that the artist statement is necessarily fundamental to great art, or even beneficial. I think the best art comes from something else, either the subconscious or some other ethereal realm. However, I would like to get better at writing about art, at the very least. Hence, this blog.
Read MoreSeeing in black and white is all about seeing things in terms of shapes, both in terms of a three dimensional form, such as a person’s figure, and in terms of a two dimensional field, the graphical composition of the photograph itself.
For seeing the form, you’re working with light and shadow with the goal of representing your subject in terms of volume, highlights, shading, and so on. Like drawing with a thick slab of charcoal, it may help to think about things in broad strokes without worrying too much about the details. One technique I use is to half-close my eyes so I am mostly looking through my eyelashes in order to blur my vision so that I am not distracted by the sharp details and textures of what I’m looking at— just the light and shadow sculpting the shape. Let the light or shadow carve out the shape of the subject of the photo.
For seeing the field, you must learn to re-frame how you are perceiving the subject, and regard the real life scene before you as a flat photograph. This is all about seeing shapes, thinking about how the eye will travel across an image (generally starting at bright areas and faces, following lines and curves, etc).
Read MoreThis is my guide to taking intimate portraits. I cover building rapport during a shoot, developing a mood, posing, gear, and lighting.
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