Ciao Amici!
Today I want to share some cool articles I’ve written, along with things I’ve read/seen/listened to that have inspired me this week. Hopefully there are some ideas in here that are inspiring for you.
I shared one of the posts we wrote for Digital Photography School all about shooting on manual. It sparked a fun debate and some pretty awesome comments on my blog (and in response I wrote a fun little story of how I shoot on manual).
I was really interested to read people’s ideas and philosophies on how they choose to shoot and why.
I, of course, have my passionate opinion, that manual is a essential to gain full creative control – but I also think you should shoot the exact way you feel comfortable and happy with. It doesn’t matter what and how you do it – as long as you do it!
As that was a popular post, I thought I’d share the latest two articles we’ve written for Digital Photography School:
Artistic Versus Technical Photography Skills – What is Holding You Back?: On my workshops I constantly notice patterns of how people learn about photography and then process the information. In this article I am sharing the most common natural tendencies that inhibit creativity, that I see in people – and how to overcome them.
Tips for Working the Scene to Take Your Image from Good to Great: I’ve written a couple of articles for my blog about ‘How I got the shot’, where I where I illustrate the progress of the shots to my best one. These have been very popular posts – although I still don’t massively enjoy sharing the rubbish shots I take before I get a good one 🙂
Take a look at more articles we’ve written for Digital Photography School here – with my 10 Ideas To Instantly Improve Your Photography Composition being the most popular so far.
Di and I are also going to share a couple of other things we have been enjoying this week, all fuel for our photography and creative practices, but not necessarily related to photography:
1. Iranian photographer Abbas died recently. Famous for photographing the Iranian revolution, he was a Magnum photographer, who spent much of his career documenting conflicts between religion and politics around the world. Gallery of his photos.
2. The Courage to Be Yourself: E.E. Cummings on Art, Life, and Being Unafraid to Feel
“To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight.” E.E. Cummings
Could not be more appropriate advice for our journey as creative people.
3. The genius of Prince. Loving Austin Kleon’s 5-hour Spotify playlist of the songs Prince recorded from 1983-1984.
4. Meditative photos and videos from free diver Ocean Ramsey who dives with sharks.
5. The Defiant Ones: I love music and being a musician was something I was considering before I took the road into photography. I loved the recent Netflix series The Defiant Ones, documenting the careers of musician/producer Dr Dre and producer/record label owned Jimmy Iovine. Really fascinating to get into the minds of people who have achieved remarkable things with their creativity.
That’s it for today. Have a stupendous day.
And remember to take that camera out – don’t let it gather dust! It needs you to bring interesting ideas into the world.
Happy photographing,
Anthony and Diana
That’s me shooting in Venice a few years ago.
All the shots in today’s article are from my Venice at Dawn photo project. I love this city! I run a photo workshop there most years, check out my workshop pages for details.