The Other "Same" Meaning of Minimal Photography →
When you think about the words Minimal Photographer there are two different meanings to it (or ask a professor in Languages and get a seminar…).
There is our meaning that I could write a whole blog about (hey, wait a minute….. I am?) But I’m just gonna wrap it up with three words… Less is more. We think about this in context to gear.
Why don’t we do the same but with the actual purpose of photography (the fake one is gearholism FYI). Rather than some crazy composition, try photographing something that shouldn’t be exciting.
Just check out the link
"You Don't Need a Big Crew to Make a Music Video" →
Great video made by the crew of two.
One filmed
One edited
And I also liked the song… Turn it up!
Lost Images That Never Existed
It’s spring and your surrounding is beautiful. Everything should look good on a photograph but for some weird reason you doubt that. Now nothing looks exciting enough.
Why?
Because you already know what you want to capture but you can’t find this image you pictured. And while you look for this image in your surroundings you could be walking past a great moment without even noticing. You’re just to busy finding the one you want that you only see the ones that you aren’t looking for. Maybe this has happened to you, my guess is without noticing.
How do you know if this has happened to you? Let’s rewind…
“It’s spring and your surrounding is beautiful. Everything should look good on a photograph but for some weird reason you doubt that. Now nothing looks exciting enough.”
Sounds familiar?
My advice:
-Take your time, no stress. Your out there to get better photos, not to set a record…
-Rather then looking for a moment, look for a certain style or technique.
No photographer is as good as the simplest camera
Experimental Weekend Ahead | The Results
Better late then never… I’m a bit behind schedule with a lot of things right now so I didn’t have time to browse through my sport photographs from the weekend.
But finally the calendar stood by me and I got a chance to check them out. Then again the calendar for some reason turned against me until now. But why wait longer, let me show you how my weekend went.
Our day started with some free time as we began ahead of the schedule to get in the zone (a saturday morning 9 AM zone…) A lot of ice on the road in our capital of Reykjavík so I didn’t drive…I drifted, almost knocking down a few traffic signals on the way. But me and Sölvi got to our destination without accidents.
We started on some swimming photography. Very warm and the humidity at these indoor pools just makes you wanna dive in (Why didn’t I? I don’t own a watertight unit for my camera…).
Well after that we photographed a lot of different sports, fencing, judo, track and field, badminton, bowling, dance and more, and I think I actually took around 10GB of photographs (not bursting much, honest..).
I think I did well with the equipment I had, mainly because it was enough. I had all my stuff because I decided to do some experimenting and decided to stay the whole event.
But if you’re interested I have published a few on my Flickr page, so check it out and see if you think I needed more equipment.
Custom shaped Snoot
So, I’ve been working in my stuido for a time and always wanted a snoot to give the gray sloppy backround some life. But a circle is just so simple - so i did a heart shaped snoot!
What you need in this minimal experiment, is:
- A Box - Not to big, not to small.
- A Pen
- Knife/Scissors
- Tape
- I started finding me a box. After trying out a lot of them the result is: The Nespresso box is awesome.
- Then I drew a ugly heart (you can draw anything you like).
- Then cut out the shape.
- Turn the box around and cut out a hole for your flash.
- Then you put the flash into the box, then use the tape to hold the box stuck to the flash.
- The result is something like this.
A Good Book To Read | Canon Photo Guidebook →
I stumbled upon this book recently but didn’t read it until recently. I thought this was just another “buy this gear” trick but it isn’t (yeah you got me there, I do make mistakes…).
The book goes a bit deeper into the mechanics of the camera. They show it with a Canon camera but it’s all pretty much the same with other gear. Why do we need to know the mechanics? Can’t we just know what a great photograph is? No, because we need to know the limits of our gear and how it will perform.
This book is free (yeah, go Canon!) and I recommend we all read it. You will not automatically take better photographs but when you browse through your worst thinking why your camera didn’t do what you made it do, you’ll know what went wrong.
It matters little how much equipment we use, it matters much that we be masters of all we do use.
— Sam Abell. An American photographer that has had frequent publishing in the National Geographic Magazine. He is known for his documentary photographs. He rarely uses flash because he prefers a pure relationship with light.
