I am really fired up at the moment. I had an amazing trip to the Amalfi Coast earlier this month; that place is out of this world beautiful. On Tuesday I went out for a very fun photo walk with my Light Monkeys group – plus I am pitching for a cool new art project and life just seems so awesome in so many ways. It’s even getting a bit warm here in London, lol!
I want to share some of that fired up, inspired energy with you.
Let us begin with the genius that was John Lennon.
You probably know that I love getting inspiration from all kinds of places. Recently I have been thinking about, and listening to, a lot of John Lennon. I have loved his music for years and years – since I was a teenager really. He is one of the few musicians whose words I actually listen to – usually I am one of those people who get absorbed by the rhythm and gheetars!
Not only is Lennon’s music amazing – Tomorrow Never Knows , In My Life, Jealous Guy,Woman are all awesome songs – but I really liked his philosophy on life. His later ideas feel very similar to my own, so I’ve picked 7 thoughts of his and I am putting them with some photos I took in Naples and along the Amalfi Coast last week.
I hope you find it a little espresso-shot of inspiration!
All the quotes below are from John Lennon.
“Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.”
I am a big fan of a bit of mooching around, daydreaming, getting lost. It’s often at those times when we have our best ideas. And it seems many great scientists have been the same way! See Darwin Was a Slacker, and You Should Be Too.
2. “Creativity is a gift. It doesn’t come through if the air is cluttered.”
I harp on about this all the time – you can’t be in the zone, the flow, when you are preoccupied with your to-do list. Here is a 2 min film from the amazing Jason Silva on Finding Your Creative Flow State that will help.
3. “Music is everybody’s possession. It’s only publishers who think that people own it.”
I photograph a lot of street art and what always strikes me about street art is how it feels like a very generous act. It’s such a temporary medium but it’s a creation – sometimes of epic quality and skill – that might be removed within hours or days.
Art for me is to be shared and taken on in the eyes and hearts and minds of anyone who enjoys it. Creating with this idea of letting out into the world, and not possessing it, for me is very inspiring.
4. “When you do something noble and beautiful and nobody noticed, do not be sad. For the sun every morning is a beautiful spectacle and yet most of the audience still sleeps.”
Don’t create for anyone but yourself!!! When you are thinking about creating with an audience in mind, in my experience it’s never as good as when you are just doing it because you love it and just have that itch to create.
Please yourself, not your audience.
5. “My role in society, or any artist’s or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.”
6. “There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance.
We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.”
This is everything I feel about life right now. No need to add my thoughts, perhaps except to say that meditation really helps me with my whole creativity / free mind / openness. And Lennon meditated too! Great article on Brainpickings about just that.
7. “Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans.”
I’m ending on Lennon’s very famous quote, because this is what I like to say to remind myself to (as they say in Shawshank Redemption) “Get busy living or get busy dying.”
Bang – there we go. Hope that short-ish post was fun.
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If you want to join me on an Italian Photography adventure – take a look at:
Venice for me is an incredible place to photograph, because not only do you have this wonderfully surreal city, set in the lagoons, with its ancient crumbling beauty – but the light is stunning. How the marine layer affects the sunrise is awesome to photograph (see my 2 min film on light & Venice here)
I get incredible reviews from this workshop – which I have run for several years now. Join me and I’ll show you all of my favourite places to shoot the city, how to escape the crowds, how to create a stunning portfolio – as well as getting your tech and creative photo skills well exercised. You will learn tonnes!
“Tony knew exactly where to go to get the best interaction of light and scenery and gave impromptu tutorials on capturing light and shadows, framing the scene, relevant shutter speed etc during our walks. This was an ideal environment to keep the adrenaline flowing and encourage the “Eureka moments”. Breakfast stops, group lunches and the final feedback session oiled the wheels. A thoroughly enjoyable, unforgettable experience.”
I was up very early this morning. In the streets of East London I watched the pre-dawn sky change colour, from the magnificent midnight blue to ever lighter shades of blue. Colourful ribbons of pinks and yellows burst across the sky, and little wisps of purple and blue clouds appeared and disappeared at random.
There is some warmth to the early morning air now, an exciting sign that spring is here and we are entering my favourite period of life in London. Warmth, sunshine, and it feels like everyone is opening up as they come out of their winter hibernation.
Today I am not offering any big challenging teachings – today I want to give you something easy, something light and joyful. We have to be light and joyful sometimes right? Especially with the thing we love so much – taking photos and being creative!
Warm spring sunrise Süleymaniye Mosque, Istanbul
First thing – today I want to focus on the subject of spring. What could be more joyful for us creatures who are emerging from the dark cold of winter into this light-filled nature-filled spring time? I know not all of you are in a springtime area, but I think you can sympathise, right?
Spring is nature’s way of saying, ‘Let’s party!’
Robin Williams
Second thing – as you know, photography is not just about the aesthetics. It’s about capturing and evoking emotion. How many ‘pretty’ photos have you seen in your life that have created no lasting impact. ZILLIONS. Even if your subject is gorgeous and wonderful, you still need an additional element – lighting, an interesting expression or something that will invoke emotion.
My challenge today is to encourage you to go out and capture the feelings of spring – ebullient, hopeful, sorrowful…whatever they may be. And if you’re not in a spring-zone, then you can capture any mood created by a season.
I thought this is a perfect challenge for people who struggle to get emotion into their photography. If you start with something pretty simple like this, then you can build up your confidence to capture some more complex emotions.
Now – let’s explore some themes that we could bring into our spring photos.
Hope
Tulips of Gulhane Park, Istanbul
You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.
Pablo Neruda
Spring is a pretty hopeful time me thinks. Light pouring into our lives after a time of relative darkness. That’s why I think this photo of the daffodils feels like a ‘hope’ photo.
Renewal
I am definitely up for some renewal right now! In fact, I believe in having regular times of renewal and rejuvenation. But unlike that feeling of renewal at the beginning of January that seems to come, I believe, from a place of guilt or panic (Must improve my life! Must get fit and start saving!) the feeling of spring’s renewal feels fun and frivolous, and very creative. A time to play with your photography, a time to experiment and explore.
Desire for adventure
In winter, I plot and plan. In spring, I move.
Henry Rollins
Having grown up in a different era where I could go out and play unattended for hours at a time, in a place that was basically summer and spring-like all year, there is something incredibly evocative for me seeing my kids in nature. But don’t we all have that nostalgic feeling when we see kids playing in nature; even my London-born wife who didn’t have the kind of outdoor adventurous life that I did feels wistful at the sight of our kids muddy and playing with sticks.
Even if it’s not about kids there is an opening up of the spirit when spring arrives. You stop hunkering down in the cold, and possibilities, ideas, thoughts of adventures start to flow. So adventure feels like a good theme for your photographs.
Joy
This photo below could be called ‘young love’. To me it is all about that feeling of beautiful weather and being finally outside, being with someone you like a lot, plus that playfulness that young couples have.
To get these kinds of shots you have to (respectfully) really look at, and notice, the interactions between people. So not just what they look like, but the dynamic they are creating together. You have to look, notice and then step forth and be brave and click when you see something interesting.
Atmosphere
Spring has a definite feeling to it; the air somehow changes, people’s mood changes, and to capture not just an individual mood of something, but the the mood of a place is a great thing to practise in your photography.
I mean think about it, right. Every day you go out of your house and there is a mood or feeling created by the time of day, the weather, and any other extraneous events going on. Like when it’s dark there could be a sinister feeling, or an earthy atmosphere at the beginning of autumn.
For me there was a palpable mood the day after the Brexit referendum, for example, or the day after the US elections. When there is a collective contemplation about an event that also seems to change the atmosphere.
The sheer vitality of life
Sometimes it can be displaying the sheer amazing aliveness that spring brings into our lives. Waking up the soil, bringing millions of flowers, plants and trees into a dazzling life-affirming display.
Sacred Coeur, Paris
Tulips, Istanbul
As with everything, though, there is always an edge, an opposite
To all of this life and vitality there is also the reminder that darkness, loss, winter, are also part of life. I think this photo hints at that edge, the darkness that is looming after the burst of colour and life.
The delight of spring light
Gotta love all that light in spring. Especially as our days get longer. Here is a very typical shot for me. Light and shadow – the shadow creating a nice contrast to the beautiful light, and that contrast makes the light more intense and more delightful.
I also love interesting lines. Can you see the horizontal lines which, although not straight, are creating structure in the photo? Then the last element is the contrast of the old crumbly wall and the beautiful delicate flowers, which is another ‘typical’ thing I do. Contrasting old and new, fresh and decaying, light and dark. The contrasting elements always help to enhance the other, making them more ‘decaying’ or more ‘fresh’ looking.
The play of light and shadow, though, is what makes it a good shot, as you can see here. This is a similar composition but not as good.
Can you see how the set up in the two photos is almost the same – the ancient crumbling wall contrasted with the pretty vibrant flowers. I ‘organised’ the elements of the photo along horizontal lines, almost rule-of-third-ish. But of course the difference with the last photo is the absence of incredible light!
As if I need to tell my regular readers how important light is! You guys totally know don’t you?!?.
So I hope you enjoyed that! I hope it makes your feet itch and you want to get out and take photos.
I am wrapping up a very exciting week where I launched my new book. It arrived from the printer on Monday (you can see me ‘unboxing’ it here.) It was super thrilling to see all this work we’ve been doing come to fruition. Can I say too that it is an awesome, awesome book, really my best yet?
You can still get one of the last books that I have of East London at Dawn right here. But they won’t be available for long as my stock has almost run out!
Have a great day, and happy photographing! As always let me know what you think! Comment below, I love hearing from you.
This week I have two things for you: an idea (a possibility) and some of my photos from the past few days. It’s hopefully a little light mind-and-eye refreshment, with a tinge of inspiration for you on this weekday-day.
“Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.” Mahatma Gandhi
One thing that I hear a lot on my workshops is: I am terrible at……technical things / being creative / seeing interesting photo opportunities. It doesn’t really matter which of these things people talk about, but many have convinced themselves that they are sorely lacking in one particular area and they will never, ever, be good at it.
I know we all have natural tendencies to be good at particular things. I know this just by looking at my kids. My four year old daughter has my intense practicality and is already telling her dreamy mother and brother they’ve put things away in the wrong place. (She recently came into the kitchen to tell us there was a wet towel in the bathroom, because obviously that was an anomaly – so she wanted to alert the necessary authorities. Which I of course loved because she notices everything. Just like Daddy!) Contrast this with my wife who doesn’t notice things like the toilet breaking or a picture falling off the wall.
So yes – we all have natural tendencies to be good at certain things. But we should never (ever, ever) just stop with what we are naturally good at. We should push ourselves to develop new skills – because we can! And it’s good for our brain to try! It is always possible to change and develop (and science now backs us up on this – our brains have the capacity to evolve).
If you think you are bad technically – don’t give into that and make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. Decide that you will now be technically excellent and your brain will start to organise itself towards acquiring those technical skills.
I’ve just got back from Venice, teaching a workshop and taking photos (I love my work!) I’m still a little bit infused with that mood and spirit that is so unique to Venice: dreamy, a bit wild, full of beauty.
“But if you died and in your will you asked for your ashes to be spread gently on the Grand Canal at midnight with a full moon, everyone would know this about you – you loved and understood beauty.” William Goldman
So this is why my post this week started with the thought of possibility. Because even though Venice is so old and vulnerable, its immense past echoing through every alley, so at the mercy of the sea and its wild energies – it seems like the kind of place that you can have mad dreams about your life, inventing, creating new ideas, even recreating yourself. It must be the beauty that intoxicates (and the sunshine :))
“To build a city where it is impossible to build a city is madness in itself, but to build there one of the most elegant and grandest of cities is the madness of genius.” Alexander Herzen
Two things about Venice surprised me – the deepness of the silence (remove the cars and if you’re used to that constant background noise, it’s like letting the air out of a balloon, as you are enveloped in silence), and the dark of the darkness (very little illumination at night and almost no nightlife).
As a child I would spend hours looking up into the sky watching for stars and trying to spot planets. My mind would go crazy imagining other worlds, other galaxies, other spaces and time. And up there was so much possibility for things beyond what we as humans could imagine. But down here on earth I am continually impressed with what we humans can imagine. What we can decide our vision to be and then go out and execute that vision. It’s stunning.
And with its turbulent history still Venice has survived through the centuries, and what a testament to the human imagination that this beautiful city exists. What is so significant about Venice is the echo of the past. Never have I been to a city where you feel so intensely the life that has been lived: the layers of time, of people, of the dramas of life, all there, waiting to be found.
“This was Venice, the flattering and suspect beauty – this city, half fairy tale and half tourist trap, in whose insalubrious air the arts once rankly and voluptuously blossomed, where composers have been inspired to lulling tones of somniferous eroticism.” Thomas Mann, Death in Venice
And so I hope to ignite a little of that feeling of possibility in you today. We don’t all need to go to Venice to experience it, the feeling of possibility exists everywhere – we just have to see it. Looking up to our wide, wide open sky at night, full of stars; the gentle lapping of the dark green water on the river in the morning; the brightness of a blue, blue sky on a summer’s afternoon. It’s all there, waiting for you.
“If we all did the things we are really capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.” Thomas A. Edison
I really hope you are having a wonderful week, and I hope too that you are making time to take photos. As always, I’d love to hear from you so please comment on my blog or email me by replying to this. And if you like what you read I’d love it if you shared this, or any of my posts. It makes a amazing difference to us in helping to spread the word about our blog. Thanks 🙂
Happy photographing!
Anthony & Diana
Some more
The Wonders of Exploring the World With Your Camera
“One’s destination is never a place but a new way of seeing things.” Henry Miller
A few evenings ago I left my office in Waterloo to head home to see my rambunctious kids and have dinner with my wife. The evening had an interesting feel to it, a misty, wintry fog hung in the air but around the edges there was a burning glow of spring light. It was an intriguing clash of seasons and so I diverted my journey to go explore the river and take some photos. I got a few nice shots but my brain was not playing ball, it felt disturbed. Running through my mind was a blog my wife and I had been working on for another website, all about the art of seeing. I kept looking at things and seeing the words clash in front of my eyes. Compositional rules started to play out in front of me, like a mad cartoon replaying over and over again on my eyeballs. It was almost too much.
I wanted to start with this because for me it’s so important to hold the ideas and suggestions that you are absorbing in your photography learning, very lightly. Too much thinking can make you, as I was, stilted and stiff. What I am always trying to encourage people to do with their photography is to loosen up, relax into themselves and their own creativity, enjoy the process. Nothing I have to offer is so weighty that it needs to be adhered to like dogma. It’s just small ideas, small prompts, small inspirations.
So, with that in mind I wanted to offer some thoughts and suggestions on finding your subject when you travel.
What are you looking for?
I am not a travel photographer or photojournalist, and so I am not looking for a comprehensive vision of a city for my dawn projects. The prep for that kind of photography is totally different. I am an artist, so I am looking to capture my vision of a place or of the city. Of course I want to photograph what makes a place iconic – there is a reason that the view of the Eiffel Tower from the Trocadero is well photographed: it’s awe inspiring! In those places I am looking for something different. A different light, a different angle, people…something that will be just mine.
Unless you have a very specific assignment or project you are working on, here are some questions to ask:
What kind of things am I interested in about this place?
What kind of things do I want to capture?
What drew me to this place?
Is there anything I hoping to find here?
And then, allow for that but not be too confined by the answers. You are on a journey, an adventure, you want to discover new things as well as making sure you get what you came for.
One insanely important thing to me when I plan my Cities at Dawn books is that I don’t want them to have a touristy feel – that I only captured the ‘surface’ of the city. I want them to be picked up by a local who then says – yes, this is my city! For instance, like how I photographed the water that is incessantly pumped out of the gutters in the morning in Paris. It’s not something you may notice but when you see a photo of it, you are reminded: of course! This is what it is to live in Paris, seeing these thin streams of water cleaning the streets. Looking not just for what is photogenic, but what it is to be there.
How much to prepare
I am a big fan of just going off and exploring and seeing what I can find. I don’t want to limit new discoveries by a pre-organised shot list. But sometimes arriving in a new place can be overwhelming and trying to get a grip on it can just be too much. So I like to get a bit of a sense of some fall back places that I want to photograph. I use Google Earth a lot, firstly to explore and then pin a bunch of interesting places onto a map.
The picture I am trying to paint here is one of balance. You need some organisation to keep you feeling sane and focused, but you need to also have a relaxed attitude so you are open to the new experiences that travel will present.
Start taking photos before you go
I like to start a new photo project when I am in the middle of something really good elsewhere. Perhaps it’s like that salesman maxim: the best time to make a sale is when you’ve just made a sale. Or (another one from my wife): how Ernest Hemingway would try to finish his writing for the day in the middle of a really good piece of writing so it was easy for him to get started the next day. If you are trying to start fresh every day then the blank page / empty memory card can feel overwhelming intimidating. But also when we are feeling creative, when we are in the flow we are more likely to have interesting ideas.
So, if I am not already working on a project back home I like to make sure I get one started before I leave. Or at the very least have a few photo walks to new places. Gets me in the mood.
Going beyond the exotic
The challenge with photographing in a new location, particularly one that is massively different from where you are from, is you can get completely distracted by what’s new to you (but not new to the world, we are no longer living in the age of exploration), and you end up taking tons of boring photos. What will give you the ability to create unique photographs of a location is how quickly you can get into the feel of the place and see it in a fresh, true and honest light.
I really enjoyed this podcast with photographer David du Chemin, who explains this issue really well – he talks about ways to combat your excitement in being in a new place so that you don’t just take all of the standard shots (look, elephants!) He suggests getting your intrigue at the exotic things you see out of the way quickly (more elephants! men with interesting headdresses!) so that you can then start seeing what’s really there, what’s really going. When you can see the place in an objective, fresh way you will find something unique to you.
To take great photos, first you must feel
I read this is a great interview with photographer Steve McCurry by travel photographer Oden Wagen recently and I love a couple of the points that McCurry makes. First:
“A picture of a guy in the street in New Guinea, with a bone through his nose is interesting to look at. But for it to be a really good photograph; it has to communicate something about what it is like to live with a bone through your nose. It is a question of the moment to reveal something interesting and profound about the human condition.”
Ansel Adams talks a lot about the feeling behind your photographs, and I think a lot of photographers forget that. Photographer Joey L (his surname doesn’t seem to appear on this site) in his tips for travelling as a photographer talks about not being a looky-loo and just snapping away, particularly in developing countries. Spending time connecting with your subject, travelling slowly, and most of all being human is the best way to get good portraits. (Joey L also has some great other travel tips, like make your fancy, expensive camera look old to limit possibility of theft).
Follow what fascinates you
When Wagen asked McCurry the question of how you can create original work in this heavily photographed world, I thought it was a great response –
“In time, you start to develop your own way of seeing and then it’s your own personality coming through the camera. We are all unique individuals; we all have our personalities. We all have our own voice, and our own style. If you look at the photographers whose work we admire, they’ve found a particular place or a subject, dug deep into it, and carved out something that’ll become special.”
This makes me think of Irving Penn’s ethnographic studies of tribesmen and workers around the world and Sebastian Selgado’s work on the forgotten communities around the world in Genesis (great Ted talk by him here where he talks about the project.)
You know the pen in some form has been around for quite a long time and yet writers always seem to have something new to say. And think about fashion, I mean, jeez, how many different styles of trousers can you make? A lot it seems…
I particularly like the concept of ‘digging deep’. You know you don’t have to come back from a photo trip with 1,000 photos of everything. 200 photos of one or two subjects, where you have dug deep into a subject that has really caught your imagination will reap more fruit for you long term than lots of photos that you (or anyone else) are unlikely to look at again. Quality not quantity.
Go off the beaten track
In my work I have noticed that I am drawn to the juxtaposition in cities of beauty and grittiness. It was particularly obvious in Paris, such a beautiful city but with lots of stark contrasts – graffiti (which I like to photograph) and dog poo (which I do not). So I find it’s always worth while digging a little deeper into a city and finding alternative views on what you will find there. When I make it to Berlin I want to go on this night time, underground art tour. For several of my trips to Paris I stayed in the area dominated by north and west African communities in Barbes Rochechouart. It’s quite a rough area in the city that few tourists experience, let alone visit (this is an interesting perspective on the area) but I really liked exploring. It gave me a totally different perspective on the city, the country and its history (great North and West African markets, amazing food like tagine and kebabs in the cafes and restaurants). It reminded me a bit of Dalston in London (although the latter is fast being taken over by the hipsters, so it’s unlikely to stay like it is for long.)
Push yourself
This is where the practice of seeing is really powerful. And you need to push yourself on this one. What’s on the overpass up there? Is that an abandoned building? Where does that little alley go….? You have to work harder than the tourists, harder than the other photographers who are also wandering around, you have to be more relentless in your search. Don’t settle for a few nice shots, go for something no-one has ever seen before. And I am here to tell you that it’s possible.
Think about doing a project on people
The easiest way to get involved and to get to know a culture is to talk to people. Maybe you have an idea before you go, or you get one when you are there, but having a subject to focus on is a really awesome way to dig deep and develop your photography.
The whole journey is the trip
I think sometimes we can get a little anxious about achieving things in our grown-up lives and in our productiveness-obsessed culture. We think OK – I’m off to Rome. We pack our bags, get on a plane, get to the hotel – rush rush rush – we have breakfast, and then off we set to take our photos. But by then you’ve already missed so much. As soon as you’ve made your decision to go on a trip you’re on the journey. The thoughts of the place, the ideas you come up with on where to shoot, your investigation of the culture, that is all setting you on the path of your journey. Your vision of your world at home has already changed as you start to mentally prepare for what is coming. Today I am London, playing in the park with my kids, chatting to my neighbour, but deep in the recesses of my mind I am wandering through the streets of Istanbul listening to the voices as I get lost in the back streets. I won’t be there until the end of the month but I have already started my journey. And so I must always have my camera with me.
Every experience you have, everything you see becomes another filter on your camera. That’s how you change as a photographer.
Don’t take crazy amounts of photos
I know the temptation to always have camera in hand, or even to spend more time looking through your viewfinder than being in a place, or being in the moment, as they say. But that really limits your potential for great photos. Firstly, it’s like a barrier between you and the place, it’s much harder to fall into conversation with people, to notice things when your camera is out, right there. Have your camera available but not always stuck in front of your face.
Secondly, you can’t absorb the culture when you are just thinking of it as a series of photos, and having an understanding and a feeling for the place will be communicated through your photos. That will be what creates the power of the image and evokes feelings with the viewer. As Maya Angelou said:
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Thirdly, and this is shocker: life isn’t just about photography! Enjoying yourself, relaxing, having a good time also need to be part of the trip (and if you really need an excuse then think the more relaxed you are, the better your mood, the better the photos.)
The photos in this blog post are from my Venice at Dawn project. I chose this selection because I like how they show the more unusual views of the city. The abandoned building I found whilst wandering along the eastern edge of the island, the brilliant little gas stations that appear on the shoreline, the main tourist drag eerily empty of people.
So there we go, some of my thoughts to get you in the mood for travelling with your photography. I have a bunch of photo workshops coming up that you are always welcome to join, in Istanbul,Rome,Venice, Paris and of course my wonderful home city of London.
If you have any questions about them, myself or Diana are always happy to answer.
Happy photographing!
And if you need any advice please do email me . I love hearing from you. Or comment on my blog 🙂
“The question is not what you look at but what you see.”
Henry David Thoreau
When we are confronted with a beautiful scene our first reaction is to take a photo. “Done – can’t wait to show my friends. Let’s get lunch.” This is what I would call the obvious photo. A snapshot.
What do I mean by the ‘obvious’? Well, in photographic terms (mine) the ‘obvious’ is what is seen and taken as a snapshot by 95% of the population (or 100% of tourists!) It is what is right in front of you, not what is behind, above, below, beneath and all around you. It is usually very beautiful and worth a snap, but like most things that are beautiful, it may have many parts and aspects that make it so.
Most of my work is shot in cities, where people with camera phones and other photographers are in abundance. Cities create a good tension because I am always aware that every view or building that I photograph has not only been copiously photographed, but is probably being photographed at the very second I am pushing the shutter button. It reminds me to push myself further, to see something new, to find a different photographic path.
So what can we do to obtain that special shot that no one else will? Here are a few super simple tips I like to use:
1. Deconstruct the scene
My favourite thing to do is to de-construct a beautiful scene and make it my own. A simple example is a landscape, say with a vast range of smoky mist-capped mountains beyond a winding river valley (Ansel Adams comes to mind). Really nice you say. Indeed it is. Who wouldn’t want that photo – it’s what we are there for, right?
Now stop. Look again ‘inside’ the scene: see that tree with light playing just on the top half and the way the light reflecting from the water illuminates the shadowed side of the tree opening up the dark. If I captured just that small part of the scene wouldn’t that also be a good photo? Maybe even better?
The only difference between the two photos is you. You make it yours by seeing it. And your vision is like no one else’s. You have made something special because you are ‘seeing’, and you saw when everyone else was enraptured by the obvious. Most people won’t see that tree or the light play on it. Most people are not aware that there is more to the scene for whatever reason; time, interest, mood, etc. As a good photographer you cannot help but to ‘see’ that piece of the obvious and make it yours.
2. Look in the opposite direction
Here’s another way. One late sunny afternoon I found myself on Westminster Bridge with twenty other photographers and we are all taking the photo (below) because well, the light was awesome.
I then started to look around as the light was fading. To my left, I saw this ice cream kiosk and behind me St Thomas’ Hospital in that epic light, but it had a different quality as it fell on the buildings and the people scattering in different directions.
I thought to myself how beautiful the hospital looked as the sun faded. And I loved how the light inside the ice cream kiosk began to get brighter relative to the daylight, like it was glowing. Which is a better photo? It all comes down to personal taste, but for me the better photo is the one only I saw.
3. Look for the photographers
Although Venice is one of the top touristy cities, I was really surprised (or am I, having spent many years dodging them?) that tourists seem to confine themselves to a few well worn routes. Venice still has a quite serenity. But what happens if you want to shoot St Mark’s Square, for example? My dawn advantage was, for once, limited. It was the one place where photographers were already up and shooting. One morning I shot the square with the most spectacular sunrise I had ever seen. A few Venetian Carnevale characters emerged, posing in front of the canal, bathed in pink light. In front of them was a scrum of photographers, snapping away like paparazzi. I didn’t want to miss this incredible light, and looking around I realised the best photo for me was of the photographers photographing. The less obvious.
(By the way, I went back to St Marks Square after a night’s rain and got a lovely shot. Rain puts photographers off in a big way!)
4. Shoot the third thing
I came across this quote about writing a few years ago and it struck me as a concept that could also apply to photography. Victoria Coren wrote about advice she had received from her father, the late writer Alan Coren:
“Don’t write the first thought that comes into your head, because that is what everyone will write. And don’t write the second thought that comes into your head, because that is what the clever people will write. When you hit on a third thought, pick up the pen. That one is just yours.”
5. Don’t be afraid not to shoot
Sometimes I go out with the intention of shooting, particularly for my dawn projects, and never take any photos. I took my family to Paris for several months to shoot my book Paris at Dawn and each morning I’d arrive home with warm fresh croissants. The first thing my wife would say was, not thank you for the croissants (!) but how many shots did you get? I think she was computing it all in her head, like hours worked = shots taken = % of project finished. I would often say none, didn’t even take out my camera, and her face would fall. Over time she realised what was going on. I did get all the photographs in the end. Some mornings there would be 3 rolls of film, sometimes none, and sometimes just a couple of shots.
Unless you are on assignment there is no pressure to shoot. I think telling yourself you will only shoot something that really inspires you is a great discipline and makes you work harder to find something unique and original. Getting you beyond ‘the obvious’.
Venice – Parco delle Rimembranze(Park of Remembrance)
Parco delle Rimembranze is a little jewel of a park located on the east side of Venice in the Castello district. It is not far from San Marcos square and all the tourists, but you wouldn’t realize that sitting on a bench overlooking the sea with the sound of children playing nearby. There is so much to see and do in Venice that is not on a beaten path. You just have a want to see it! When I come to the park I’m amazed at how beautiful and peaceful it is at almost any time of day. There are no crowds, no noise, and no stress. This is the place the locals come to breath-in what little green spaces Venice has to offer.
One reason the park may not be so popular to tourists are the statues that reside in it.
