How To Create Art With The Camera

The artistry of photography. A lot of books and seminars talk about the technical and some even talk about composition but why do some photographs really stand out and others, well others are just snap shots.

There is the usual. Keep the main point of the image (like the eyes of a pet or person) in the interesting quadrants of the frame. If you do not know what that is it is ok. I will talk more about it but first I want to talk about the art.

I usually start off with a vision in my head of what I would like to get. When I first started photography I never could get the image I saw in my mind onto film or digital format. It was after shooting for a while before I began to get those ideas I had on film (or digital format). Take the apple images. I had a project of an “apple a day”. The photograph you see is the image I had in my mind. It is the image I wanted to put on film (digital photography). It took me about 6 shots to get it. 

So what is the secret to making that happen? Next time I will concentrate on how to visualize the image you want and how the practice of photography will get you there. I think it might take many post on the visual artistic side of photography but I hope you will learn this aspect that truly makes photography the fine art medium that it is.

A couple of sites that offer information from lighting to lenses are photo.net
another really good site on strobs is strobist We did have an OC chapter going but we have not had a meetup in a while now.