Imitation to Innovation: Unlocking Creative Photography

[@MatthewTolanNZ]

Wonderful to hear real photography discussions on KZbin, not just guys talking about camera gear!! This sort of thing is pushing me to find more local photographers and see how they have captured my own country and people. Keep up the good work!

[@ThePhotographicEye]

Thank you

[@Consciousphotography]

I love the copy a photographer assignment. It is something I always wanted to do.

[@filipearruda3]

This reminds me a small book I got a couple of years ago called "Steal Like An Artist". If you don't know it give it a try. Easy reading and very interesting. All human history is based on influences, specially in arts. From the first hand drawn in a cave wall million years ago until today. So yeah, "steal like an artist". Even if you try to copy you're putting a bit of yourself in it.

[@yaffulwoodpeckerpresents7784]

It's part of a quote from Picasso: “Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.”

[@liveinaweorg]

I read that recently and also 'Keep Going' by the same author. They made me think, much like this channel does.

[@scottsoutter7271]

Inspiration for other photographers is a great start to copy technique and process. I’ve found in my own practice and learning that having an empathy for the subject is critical. Or, in other terms understanding what the hell your photographing matters. A dancer (which I am not!) can anticipate the moment an amazing move might happen, same thing with an athlete who finds her or himself behind the camera. Familiarity and knowledge of the subject or domain makes such a difference.

[@Elassyahmed]

For me, the key is indifference - being indifferent to trends, other's opinions, success, etc... and jist follow your heart and mind with bo end result in mind

[@davidohman9211]

When started my career as a graphic designer in 1972, I lucked out by working with, art directing excellent photographers who could execute my vision. Along the way, I not only took copius notes on how they produced beautiful photographs for me, I started buying books - lots of books - on Penn, Salgado, Dorothea Lange, Meyerwitz, Cartier-Bresson, Margeret Bourke-White, Edward Steichen, Joseph Karsh, W. Eugene Smith, Annie Leibowitz, Arnold Newman. Tony Snowden ... Well, you get my point. After 25 years as a creative director, I was encouraged to shoot professionally myself by an old photographer, Alan Fontaine, who used to shoot for Vogue and Harper's Bazaar in the 1940s and early 1950s. And so, in 1994, I changed careers at age 50 and never looked back. I have been influenced by all those great photographers and in the process, created my own path. Studying those photographers, and others, has been the equivelant of "intellectual osmosis." One of my teachers in art school (in the 1960s, told us, The camera is just a tool. Shoot with your heart." Alex's series on KZbin confirms all of that. Without being preachy, he opens minds.

[@alistairmerrifield5035]

Glad you dropped the standing on the shoulders of giants quote in, this is what we do in science! We take previous work and apply it in new areas and/or make small changes to it to advance scientific knowledge. (Yes, sometimes someone brilliant comes along now and then and does something innovative and original… but this is the exception rather than the rule).

[@chrisbrown6432]

Thanks Alex. When I was taught photography as part of my graphic design course in 1968 we were informed that we need to create photographs that have a range of tones from dark to light. It was only after I qualified and left design school that I discovered high key and low key photography and solarising my prints. We had to produce a print in the darkroom that had the range of tones too. I loved using line film in my camera because it appealed to my graphic design training and reminded me of all the pop posters of the time with high contrast black shadows of Jimmy Hendrix and Bob Dylan for example. Your examples make your teaching very clear to me. What I love about the high contrast photographs is the flattening effect that makes it easier to appreciate shape and the composition of the shapes, harmonising everything into a unity.

[@DileepJain]

Hi Alex, it is always a pleasure to watch your Photographic Eye. Thanks for allowing to share our picture that is inspired by well known artist's work. I have been working on a series of images capturing the essence of power station series created by Michael Kenna, and am really glad to share a image from that series I have created.

[@Hassel_Shots]

Love your passion for photography and love your passion to share with us of your experiences, ideas and challenges! Great work!!!

[@ThePhotographicEye]

Thanks so much!

[@mrswinkyuk]

I love these talks, such a refreshing, interresting change for the usual "This one trick..." form of video. Not content for it's own sake but genuinely interesting and informative.

[@bobbyw59]

Thanks!

[@paolociccone]

Interesting that you mentioned Hurrell, since he is my reference/hero and I spent about 18 months in researching and reproducing his style. I love the Holl;ywood portrait and that is what I do today. Hurrell is pretty much 180 degrees away from what is taught today in photography. The use of continuos lights, fresnel, the use of large format cameras, film, obviously. I got good results using LED continuos lights but there is no doubt that halogen light is different. There is also no way you can recreate something like Hurrell using strobes. You can get close but the whole point was that he shaped the light for each person's features and for the mood of the day. As you mentioned, today a lot of people are happy to publish a lighting chart and many will adopt it without questioning them or modifying them. Hurrell saw the light because he was shaping it with every subject. C.S. Bull made a snide comment about it but that was pure rivalry :) I believe that you need to get in the head of the photographer to be able to imitate and replicate their ideas. Looking at the photos will bring you just so far. Hurrell's motivations for doing what he was doing don't come through the images alone. His mastery of retouching is integral part of the style. If you use hard light at the steep angles that he was using, the result will be rather unflattering, especially with digital. The fact is that he knew how to retouch on a negative and he knew exactly how to push and stretch the medium. From developing his own negatives to the retouching. I believe that to get close to his mastery it is necessary to use film,;digital's treatment of the highlights is simply not good enough. And there is something about the perspective of a 300mm lens used 6-10 feet away from the subject. That's why the view camera is integral part of Hurrell's style. IMHO, you can get good results with medium format (120 film, not the fake digital medium format of Fuji and Haselblat) but anything smaller will just not have the same visual qualities of Hurrell's portraits. Thank you very much for the great, continuos information and inspiration. I tried to upload one of my portraits to the GDrive but it didn't allow me. Just FYI :)

[@freygallery]

Thanks again for another inspiration. I learn or reinforce something very basic with each of your videos.

[@ThePhotographicEye]

You are so welcome!

[@anta40]

Ah, gotta love you mentioned 2 Adams: Ansel & Robert (e.g 4:00, 4:20). I still admire Ansel's epic landscape photos, well he's also master printer. Also his "zone system" is practically a standard knowledge among B&W fans. That said, content wise, I'm not that obsessed with natural landscape photos. Sure I still like to take a few, ocassionally. There are not much interesting natural landscape scenes on my town, unfortunately. What Robert Adams did, capturing the urban landscape scenes, for me is much more accessible. And I could see more interesting geometric compositions in his images. In photography clubs, I wouldn't be surprised if Ansel get more fans :)

[@olestolberg483]

Many thanks for another of your inspiring video chats! 😊

[@washingtonradio]

Learning the techniques and technical skills is important and trying recreate a famous photo is a good way to learning these skills. But what is more important is understanding why someone made the specific technical choices - was limits of technology, personal preference, something they wanted to bring out, etc.

[@geoffmphotography9444]

There are some good books about George Hurrell still around. I believe he and his contemporaries used Fresnel lens Klieg lights in close for portraits. Difficult to replicate I should imagine. Maybe with tungsten lights? Very interesting video thanks.

[@101wonderment]

I always enjoy watching your videos and get more of your unique perspective... There is always something to learn from here! Thanks

[@ThePhotographicEye]

My pleasure!

[@Oncewasgolden]

The idea that “Nobody creates in a vacuum” has been around forever and in every form of creativity. That leaves us with the onus of creating better than those who came before. It is quite the monumental task and one that most find too daunting. It comes down to just accepting this task or moving on to something…anything that is not creative in nature. Question is, how many can do one of the other?

[@cmichaelanthonyimages2197]

Study the classic paintings if you want to learn posing. One of the key elements if you do people photography... understand posing. Masculine, feminine, hand posing, submissive and agressive posing. To copy someones work is the ultimate form of flattery. Add your signature style, and your there. Attend live workshops, one day class or several days.

[@davidohman9211]

I meant to add below, that there were other photographers I met along the way who told me my lighting looked a lot like the paintings from Caravaggio and Vermier. I deeply appreciated those comments. And I suspect I was, in fact, influenced by those artists from the Renaissance era. As I launched my portrait career in 1994, of course, I bought lighting gear, too. But my goal was always to use it to look like natural lighting, such as from a window or skylight. I'll leave fashion lighting to others. By using, or creating a natural lighting look, I wanted my those sitting for me to get the applause meter, not me. It was never about "me." It has to be about the person, or groups of people. Thanks for letting this 79 year-old photographer prattle on about the good old days.

[@romekk3975]

Awesome video. I can't wait to see the next one when you will try to compare inspirations with the creative copies ...

[@ThePhotographicEye]

Thanks so much!

[@seaeagles6025]

Hi Alex, it's always good to get inspiration from other famous photographers and reading photography books, like you have said in the past. It took me a while to read photography books to get inspiration, it's the best thing i ever did to improve my photography thanks to your advice Alex. Thank you. 😊

[@seaeagles6025]

Thanks Alex 😊

[@Tony-Larzzo]

What’s the best photography book you read?

[@seaeagles6025]

@@Tony-Larzzo Street Photography Workshop from Brian Lloyd Duckett, and why Photographers prefer cloudy days from Haje Jan Kamps. 😊

[@digeratadesign]

brilliant video and immediately helped me see the influences in my shots that I had not considered before

[@johnclay7644]

informative content

[@outtathyme5679]

Hope to see you in DC. There’s a pretty active photography community here

[@maureenmarshall1070]

Love your videos and the way you introduce other photographers' work. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

[@ThePhotographicEye]

My pleasure!

[@AliasJimWirth]

Good start for the New Year. Happy New Year and thank you, Alex.

[@ThePhotographicEye]

Same to you!

[@charlesk323]

Excellent advice, as usual. I hope to join the join-up in San Francisco for Irving Penn-whenever that is. Hope to see some of you there. Also, for those of you contemplating signing up for Alex's Cohort, as a former participant, I would highly recommend it.

[@ThePhotographicEye]

Thanks Charles. Appreciate it!

[@dandrehamilton6598]

Thank you for this insightful video!

[@ThePhotographicEye]

You are so welcome!

[@tornenzen]

I love your recommendation to seek inspiration from other photographers. I also find inspiration from paintings, Chagall's windows, furniture and architecture. What interests me is that these artists have freedom in their choices of form and colour. On another note, the link to Google Drive says that I don't have permission to upload a picture - The shared folder is Read Only at this time. Thanks again for your videos - they are springboards to so much learning and excitement!

[@ThePhotographicEye]

Hi. That's odd about the read only access - It was on editor, but someone must have changed it. It's fixed now. Thanks for pointing it out

[@jamesbarnes3063]

Word! Happy new year

[@ThePhotographicEye]

Happy new year!!

[@kennethnielsen3864]

Thanks for sharing.

[@d.k.1394]

Think different. Photograph different.

[@amosburton2439]

Thank You

[@ThePhotographicEye]

You're welcome

[@reinhartreuschel5499]

It's observational learning as we know it from Albert Bandura's social-cognitive learning theory. It's not conditioning but motivating reinforcement. Today we accept the mirror-neuron theory: we are reflected by stunning persons and/or images and want to do what they do or feel 'infected' by them and their work. If imitation leeds to innovative ideas, it's a phantastic kind of progress;-)) @philosimot

[@d.k.1394]

Nice

[@markgoostree6334]

I have said it ... EVERYTHING has been photographed. Everything in front of my camera has been in front of a better photographers camera. I likely do not know who that person is but, they have already done it. I still do my best and try to have fun with it... knowing theirs is better.

[@chriscard6544]

I dont think so, there is new buildings, new faces, new weather and so on

[@benjireid798]

Its not so much what's in front of you but how YOU see it.

[@stayuntilforever]

Not everyone has uses, promist filters, nd filters etc for the subjects. I often try to take images no one has ever taken.

[@TheParadoxDestroyer]

Everything in front of a camera has many facets, like a diamond. What facet you choose to speak about makes each photograph the voice of the artist.

[@chriscard6544]

@@TheParadoxDestroyer I noticed that you say very interesting comments

[@flightographist]

I accept your meta modern challenge. Edit: we, and our seconds, meet on the green at sunrise with 35mm! Our seconds are free to wield 24-50mm! Happy New Yr all!

[@ThePhotographicEye]

Happy new year

[@Austinite333]

The 100 meter dash has been run a million times but has it been run as fast as it can? Roger Bannister was the first human to be recorded running the mile at under 4 minutes. The record is now 15 seconds faster than that. What would be the sense in saying Football has been played so many times so why play it again? My point is obvious. We build off of each other. Does anyone believe Ansel Adam’s took the very best ever shot of Yosemite? And if the answer is yes I’ll bet he would encourage others to do even better.

[@tedbrown7908]

Just watched a YT video on Black and white Photography. (kzbin.info/www/bejne/b3vYopqJarB2aKc) This made a lot of sense, so I bought a 50mm single aspherical lens for my R5 and will test this out next week.

[@arthurunion9180]

Second

[@ThePhotographicEye]

Third!

[@chriscard6544]

first

[@ThePhotographicEye]

Third!

[@chriscard6544]

@@ThePhotographicEye ahaha