Going Beyond Shooting at Eye Level

A very good article discussing the benefits of not shooting from eye level but choosing different points of view.

However, if you’re one of those people who never moves or bends or crouches, then you’ve got a whole spectrum of shot angles available to you that are just waiting to be explored!

It’s one of those things, that I found helped me improve significantly. Definitely worth the read.

via Going Beyond Shooting at Eye Level.

Contrast

This week’s exercise was all about contrast:

Take your camera [...] and go for a walk. Look for scenes in which you can put conceptual contrasts into the frame. Start easy. Wet and Dry. Big and Small. Rough and Smooth. Young and Old. Easy right? Now get a little more esoteric. See how far you can push this.

I was a little nervous about this assignment since it was less technical and easy to follow than last weeks assignment on getting pickier. Fortunately, I had Mayra helping me with this assignment. So we went out to an abandoned brick factory in Munich, which provided a perfect play ground … and I got my first contrast picture quite early. Below you see the view out of a run down house to a new built house. The longer I look at this picture the more contrasts I recognize: Old vs. new, broken vs. intact, inside vs. outside. Continue reading

Get pickier

Sunday I started my first exercise: Get pickier.

Head out with your camera for an hour and force yourself to shoot a hundred frames – push yourself creatively. [...] But now do the opposite. Go out and shoot only 3 frames. [...] Shoot less, not more. [...] Would you put this on your wall? No? Delete it. Try again.

So I went out and tried to shoot those hundred pictures in the hour I was given. Unfortunately I just made it to just 75. However, I saw a lot of things in my immediate neighborhood, that I haven’t notice before – the first one shown below, being literally within 100 meters from my flat. Continue reading

Starting my way to photography greatness

A little over a year ago I bought a DSLR – a decision that way accompanied by a lot of initial doubt, frustration and great joy when things started to fall in place. Ever since I carried my camera to various places around the world – from the US West coast to the Japanese East coast and back to Munich. It was always fun. However, it was a highly irregular hobby, with my camera lying around for weeks, sometimes for months.

Therefore I made a resolution: I want to shoot more regular and become a better photographer. To gain traction on this resolution, I want to publish my progress once a week on this blog. That way I have a journal of my progress.

Making things a little more interesting, I’ll use David duChemin’s book ‘TEN – Ten Ways To Improve Your Craft. None of them involve buying gear‘. It’s an eBook, I bought being intrigued by its low price (just five US$ – less than a latte at a Munich Starbuck’s) and by the reviews I read. It’s structured into ten separate lessons, each accompanied by so called’ creative excercises’. Although I cannot tell whether the guidance is good or not, it’s an interesting read by itself. The verdict about the quality comes in ten weeks.

So, if you’re interested, follow me on my way to photography greatness … or watch me fail. However, I hope it will be fun and one of my highlights of 2010 – yes, it’s a totally self-indulging activity, but this is my blog and I can do whatever I want to.

Picture of my Pentax K200D