My brother is a photographer at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. I was looking through some of his shots, and thought I'd share a couple that I think relate well to the current challenge. This first one is one of my all-time favorites of his... I'd be curious to hear from folks about how they'd rate it if it had been submitted to the "reflections" challenge:
He sure has an eye Alan. I like all of them. #1] is my favorite also but #2] is really good also. I would voted either of them a 9 or 10. #3]I a winner for NS. Don't give him dpchallenge URL. :)
Something that often bothers me on here is that we don't get to attach a 'blurb' that gets seen by the voters. I.e., the details field should be visible when voting.
In each of these cases, while the pictures are good on their own, I think the impact is much higher because of the one line context under each picture.
Gordon, ditto to your adding comments, too. I would like to see the section of submission with two comment fields. One for shot details, like it's set up and the other for the "artist's story". The second section would be on the voting page, near the bottom, so it could be ignored if desired.
I might also add that when we were growing up (around the time I was starting college and my brother was in high school) we both worked part-time as photographers at our local newspaper, The Punxsutawney Spirit. Back in those days he had some pretty questionable skills as a photographer. For example, if he was asked to take a head shot of someone, he'd basically stand the whole way across the room!
As he went through college (as a journalism major with little interest in photography at the time) he began to show some amazing creativity. He seemed to learn a lot by watching the work of other people, and he attended a couple seminars along the way.
Now, less than 10 years later, he has won countless local, state-wide and national press awards, and he is one of the leading sports photographers in Pittsburgh.
I say all of this as encouragement to those who participate here who feel that they may never attain higher scores, or who feel that their creativity is lacking. His early photos, I can assure you, were quite unimpressive... but by being dedicated to learning from others, he improved by leaps and bounds.
I can't begin to say what an incredible tool this site is for developing skills and "an eye" for photography. By participating in this site for just over a month, I already feel my eyes "opening" a bit further to what's around, and that has made this a lot of fun!
Originally posted by alansfreed: He seemed to learn a lot by watching the work of other people...
I would love to hear what he has to say about this issue. I feel the same way. I have learned MORE from watching and reproducing the work of others than I have from any other single element of the hobby.
Ask your brother if he ever tried to reproduce images he had seen in the past in order to learn the method....
Ask your brother if he ever tried to reproduce images he had seen in the past in order to learn the method....
I tried that, got in trouble for asking a bunch of kids if they would please hold their breath and put their faces in the water so I could take a picture...I'm not allowed at my local pool anymore... :( hehe
* This message has been edited by the author on 9/25/2002 1:28:51 PM.
I think improvement through trial and error is a great way to learn in digital photography. It certainly doesn't cost much to make photos...
THIS photo is something that I just stumbled upon a few weeks ago, but the way it is done is almost a direct duplication of a photo I have seen in the past.
When you see something that you REALLY like in a photograph, have you ever tried to recreat it yourself? If so, were you successful? not successful? Did it take a few tries to get it right? What did you learn from the experience?
I did one photograph in the past that was relatively well-like by those who have seen it. It wasn't, IMO, a perfect shot either. I plan to do it again until I get it right.
THIS photo had a high impact on some people and a subjectively poor impact on others. It scored well here on DPC, but it's not a finished product. It's also a concept that is done quite frequently. It's NOT a unique idea, but there is a difficult lesson to learn in perfecting this shot. Maybe when I figure out exactly what that is, I will share it here :)
Trial and error... Trial and error... each mistake I make tells me how NOT to do it next time...
The picture that I will almost certainly enter this week is of an image that I photograph on five separate occasions each and every week. The image occurs where I catch the bus each evening on my way home from work, and I take many shots of it each day.
While determining exactly what I needed to submit as a good piece of work, I went back over the literally hundreds of the same shot I have already taken. It is simply amazing how much better my shots last night, for example, were than those I took four weeks ago, or even two weeks ago. The discussions here have been an enormous help in that improvement; but so has the simple repetition of essentially the same shot under differing conditions, and the study of each repetition.
(Huh, well we'll see how the voters think of it next week!)
Originally posted by JohnSetzler : Originally posted by alansfreed: [i]He seemed to learn a lot by watching the work of other people...
I would love to hear what he has to say about this issue. I feel the same way. I have learned MORE from watching and reproducing the work of others than I have from any other single element of the hobby.
Ask your brother if he ever tried to reproduce images he had seen in the past in order to learn the method....
John, I know this question was addressed to Alan's brother, but I must say that I am learning by the same method you mentioned. "reproducing the work of others" Offhand two come to mind from this site..your one with the American Flag, and one I think is Gordon's, the "wine glass" image. I also have found and reproduced the work of photographers on other sites as well. Some of my best learning has been by imitation. HERE are some of my pictures for all to see and comment on.
Originally posted by Gracious: John, I know this question was addressed to Alan's brother, but I must say that I am learning by the same method you mentioned. "reproducing the work of others" Offhand two come to mind from this site..your one with the American Flag, and one I think is Gordon's, the "wine glass" image. I also have found and reproduced the work of photographers on other sites as well. Some of my best learning has been by imitation. HERE are some of my pictures for all to see and comment on.
This is certainly something I try to do a lot. Usually I start off with a picture I like and try to understand the technique used to create it. Along the way I usually go off in a different direction and end up making it 'my' shot, rather than an attempt at a straight copy but usually learn a new approach along the way.
Trial and error is certainly a key, and a great advantage of digital. But you have to look at your errors and learn from them ! If you just make lots of mistakes, you'll keep making them. I spend quite a lot of the time looking at what I did wrong to try and work out how to do it better next time.
Certainly I feel this is the two key advantages of digital 1/ free to do 2/ very quick feedback in the shoot/ review/ shoot again loop, rather than having to wait for development. I can see the impact of camera settings straight away, rather than having to keep a log and try to remember what I did. EXIF data is wonderful in this respect too. I really hope people are using these features of their digi-cams to learn and improve.
Here's my brother's response to "do you try to reproduce the results of others to learn the method":
I can't say I ever really just duplicated someone else's work to learn by - I think just constantly looking at people's style's of photography is the way I learned - I guess duplicating a "style" would be more how I would describe it. If that makes any sense! - Matt Freed
Originally posted by JohnSetzler : Originally posted by alansfreed: [i]He seemed to learn a lot by watching the work of other people...
I would love to hear what he has to say about this issue. I feel the same way. I have learned MORE from watching and reproducing the work of others than I have from any other single element of the hobby.
Ask your brother if he ever tried to reproduce images he had seen in the past in order to learn the method....
[/i]
* This message has been edited by the author on 9/26/2002 9:06:02 PM.
* This message has been edited by the author on 9/26/2002 9:06:25 PM.
