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How do you take a good photograph?

SheilaNaGig said:
Don’t worry about the narrative or plot. Or at least, don’t get hung you on it.

You’re an excellent writer Edie . I still recall posts you made years ago, in detail, because by they were so vivid and arresting. The story, the plot, is in the detail of what you write, it comes from your mind. Same with photographs really.

Don’t try to emulate someone else. Get to know your own style and strengths and work from that point outwards. Same with photos and your writing.

That Decisive Moment thing, the instant when your heart says “This!”, you can get that with other creative endeavours for sure and I reckon you already know the feeling. Work on recognising it, believing it, trusting it.

dessiato ’s suggestion of sitting and watching the world, the way the light changes, you could do that in a wide open way and just wait for the “Yes,This” instant to happen and then pay attention to what triggered it. Did the light change? Did a figure walk into view and change the balance of things somehow?

I reckon you could maybe sit and write what you’re seeing/feeling and the photo bit might suddenly reveal itself to you. You’re already looking and seeing, really Looking and really Seeing, aren’t you. So maybe you can sneak up on the photo bit by trusting yourself to know it.

Then you’ll feel frustrated by the bits that don’t work (format, set up, light, equipment) and that can then drive your development.

You don’t really need a lot of kit though.

Great Photographers Who Use Crappy Cameras

A few days ago, an ill-worded update on Nikon camera maker’s official Facebook page enraged hundreds. It read: “A photographer is only as good as the equipment he uses, and a good lens is essential to taking good pictures! Do any of our Facebook…
www.flavorwire.com www.flavorwire.com


ETA
There’s loads more about that, do a search for “great photo crappy camera”
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Heh well ty very much :oops:

I’m not sure going down the post a picture for criticism Route is the right way to go. But fwiw heres a picture I took in January that was definitely a ‘that feels like Leeds’ moment.

7E336AA3-7D9A-4D0B-96DF-1431F13DA8D0.jpeg
 
I’d love to see anyone else’s picture that they felt strongly about btw. Although I’m aware there’s a whole nother thread for that.
 
One thing it's worth remembering is that people like Killip didn't just rock up and shoot pictures using their amazing skills and get them printed. For example, In Flagrante, his famous book from the north east, has pics taken over twelve years. In general spending a long time getting familiar with a situation is quite normal - you need to know how things work, what happens, what images are going to particularly mean something and say something about the situation. I did a course with a guy called John Free who talked about taking pictures of people living and riding trains in the freight yards of LA - he was saying that most of the time he wouldn't even have a camera, he maybe took a few shots a year, he would go down every day and talk to folk and listen to their stories.

A visual education helps transform these sorts of concepts into something that might work visually, but you need the concepts and the understanding before you can do that, and expressing that in other media like simply talking about what you've seen and what you want to show is important too. There are cheap tricks you can use to get likes on insta but that's not how you do anything good.

Also I think it's important that pictures are part of a whole, the whole series of images you have. Social media is bad for concentrating on "one killer picture" but you can't think like that when actually taking pictures - some may be more or less immediately grabbing but you can't tell a story with one sentence.
 
FridgeMagnet said:
One thing it's worth remembering is that people like Killip didn't just rock up and shoot pictures using their amazing skills and get them printed. For example, In Flagrante, his famous book from the north east, has pics taken over twelve years. In general spending a long time getting familiar with a situation is quite normal - you need to know how things work, what happens, what images are going to particularly mean something and say something about the situation. I did a course with a guy called John Free who talked about taking pictures of people living and riding trains in the freight yards of LA - he was saying that most of the time he wouldn't even have a camera, he maybe took a few shots a year, he would go down every day and talk to folk and listen to their stories.

A visual education helps transform these sorts of concepts into something that might work visually, but you need the concepts and the understanding before you can do that, and expressing that in other media like simply talking about what you've seen and what you want to show is important too. There are cheap tricks you can use to get likes on insta but that's not how you do anything good.

Also I think it's important that pictures are part of a whole, the whole series of images you have. Social media is bad for concentrating on "one killer picture" but you can't think like that when actually taking pictures - some may be more or less immediately grabbing but you can't tell a story with one sentence.
Click to expand...
Good points. I’ve no interest in making a name for myself (even if I had the talent) and don’t use social media to speak of. But the understanding the rhythms of things, how they work, putting the time in. Maybe I don’t have investment to make. On the other I’ve lived and moved through and raised kids in this city for over 20 years now. So there’s bits I know.
 
FridgeMagnet said:
One thing it's worth remembering is that people like Killip didn't just rock up and shoot pictures using their amazing skills and get them printed. For example, In Flagrante, his famous book from the north east, has pics taken over twelve years. In general spending a long time getting familiar with a situation is quite normal - you need to know how things work, what happens, what images are going to particularly mean something and say something about the situation. I did a course with a guy called John Free who talked about taking pictures of people living and riding trains in the freight yards of LA - he was saying that most of the time he wouldn't even have a camera, he maybe took a few shots a year, he would go down every day and talk to folk and listen to their stories.

A visual education helps transform these sorts of concepts into something that might work visually, but you need the concepts and the understanding before you can do that, and expressing that in other media like simply talking about what you've seen and what you want to show is important too. There are cheap tricks you can use to get likes on insta but that's not how you do anything good.

Also I think it's important that pictures are part of a whole, the whole series of images you have. Social media is bad for concentrating on "one killer picture" but you can't think like that when actually taking pictures - some may be more or less immediately grabbing but you can't tell a story with one sentence.
Click to expand...
Apart from the whole “one sentence story” genre ;) :D
 
Remember that a camera doesn't see how your eye sees. Your eye will automatically jump to whatever it thinks is important. To a camera everything in the frame is of equal value. That bit of litter on the ground is just as important to the camera as your child's face. Taking a good photo is as much about what you leave out as what you include. You need to learn to see how the camera sees in order to get the best out of it. The more pictures you take the better you'll get. (And I don't mean a scatter gun approach like someone suggested earlier in the thread.)

The photo you posted is good, but could be better. I like beesonthewhatnow 's idea of making it black and white, but I think a small bit of cropping to exclude a couple of bits of extraneous detail tightens the composition and gives it a slightly different focus.

edie.jpg

I've cropped a tiny bit from the left hand edge to lose that little black dot to the left of the lamp-post and a bit more from the right edge to lose those bright elements of a window pane and a lamp which pull your eye away from the shoes hanging from the telephone wires.
 
That photo is very nearly really really good Edie !

It’s definitely evocative and it tells a story. Several stories. All those shoes! It has a stillness that works in counterpoint to the busyness that must happen at other times, not least the determined efforts to hook those trainers over the lines. And it’s a bit mysterious too: what happened? who did this? why? when? As well as all the stuff the viewer brings, cultural knowing and not knowing.

I’d have tried to include the telephone pole, I think. It would give strong frame on the left hand side, and also provide context for the lines overhead, and a partner for the lamppost at the end of the street. I think I’d want to offset the line of the top telephone wire so it’s not exactly horizontal to the edge of the frame too. Or anyway, I’d play around with that
 
Edie said:
Good points. I’ve no interest in making a name for myself (even if I had the talent) and don’t use social media to speak of. But the understanding the rhythms of things, how they work, putting the time in. Maybe I don’t have investment to make. On the other I’ve lived and moved through and raised kids in this city for over 20 years now. So there’s bits I know.
Click to expand...
I mean that's a big advantage in that you'll know the context of everything you see, how it fits into the rest of the city. In fact sometimes I think it can be a bit much when you're very familiar with a place - because you understand everything so automatically, it's hard to pick anything out, I have this trouble in London, it all looks the same to me now.

Sometimes doing a deliberate themed project can help focus I find, with specific subjects or using a broader concept. So I might say I was going to do the theme of "for sale" for the next week or two. I live on a street with a lot of fluctuating shops, plus there's a market, and property keeps changing hands as well. I could be looking for shop windows, estate agent signs, people buying things, the differences between different customers in different shops, how people are looking at things that are on sale... as long as it fits somehow it's fine, but it keeps you looking all the time which is the main point.

ETA: also if you have a specific project, if people look at you funny you can always say "oh I'm a photography student mate, I'm doing a project on X, got any good ideas?". We're all photography students after all, it's not a lie.
 
RoyReed said:
Remember that a camera doesn't see how your eye sees. Your eye will automatically jump to whatever it thinks is important. To a camera everything in the frame is of equal value. That bit of litter on the ground is just as important to the camera as your child's face. Taking a good photo is as much about what you leave out as what you include. You need to learn to see how the camera sees in order to get the best out of it. The more pictures you take the better you'll get. (And I don't mean a scatter gun approach like someone suggested earlier in the thread.)

The photo you posted is good, but could be better. I like beesonthewhatnow 's idea of making it black and white, but I think a small bit of cropping to exclude a couple of bits of extraneous detail tightens the composition and gives it a slightly different focus.

View attachment 234752

I've cropped a tiny bit from the left hand edge to lose that little black dot to the left of the lamp-post and a bit more from the right edge to lose those bright elements of a window pane and a lamp which pull your eye away from the shoes hanging from the telephone wires.
Click to expand...

I actually like that white spot on the far right and I’d leave it in.

For me, it anchors the end of the line at the edge of the picture, like an exclamation point, with something that opposes the dark spots of the shoes. And the guttering it’s attached to (it’s a reflection of light off the end of a gutter I think?) is at an angle that offers a dynamic switch to the telephone lines. It’s short and chunky and pointing in a different direction to the long slender elegance of the telephone lines.
 
FridgeMagnet said:
I mean that's a big advantage in that you'll know the context of everything you see, how it fits into the rest of the city. In fact sometimes I think it can be a bit much when you're very familiar with a place - because you understand everything so automatically, it's hard to pick anything out, I have this trouble in London, it all looks the same to me now.

Sometimes doing a deliberate themed project can help focus I find, with specific subjects or using a broader concept. So I might say I was going to do the theme of "for sale" for the next week or two. I live on a street with a lot of fluctuating shops, plus there's a market, and property keeps changing hands as well. I could be looking for shop windows, estate agent signs, people buying things, the differences between different customers in different shops, how people are looking at things that are on sale... as long as it fits somehow it's fine, but it keeps you looking all the time which is the main point.

ETA: also if you have a specific project, if people look at you funny you can always say "oh I'm a photography student mate, I'm doing a project on X, got any good ideas?". We're all photography students after all, it's not a lie.
Click to expand...
I’ve always enjoyed working to a theme or concept, was part of the reason why I started the original monthly photo competition here all those years ago...
 
I tend to take quite a few photographs when I am out with my camera. Often I know that this particular one won't be a keeper but I will take it anyhow, it serves to keep me alert and knowing the settings of my camera so that if a decent opportunity arises I am ready for it. Often I am happy if I get one or two decent keepers from a session of perhaps 40 - 100 images.

I know some wildlife photographers shoot thousands of photos and then on returning to their computers they select their keepers and just delete the rest of their images. I am not so fast to delete non keeper images.
 
Wow that’s so cool SheilaNaGig I’d love to of had that kind of exposure to art or photography. I bet you’ve learned loads. It doesn’t read like showing off, it just reads like you telling us the facts of your upbringing and the adults you were around! I watched The Queen and Princess Margaret fell in love with a photographer in the 1960s, and now your parents are like him in my mind :thumbs:

Thanks also to RoyReed for sharing your thoughts. I think you’re a professional if memory serves, (and so many of you on this thread actually are really knowledgeable).

Well it’s been fun. I’ll take some photos when I’ve time!
 
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