Look at other photographer's work?

[Kolander]

Of course, who doesn't? All professional do in all works.

In my case, I follow closely fashion photographers (Mario Testino, Giuliano Bekor, Melissa Rodwell, Rankin, Jack Guy, Yu Tsai, Lindsay Adler...) and wedding photographers (Buissink, Yervant, Ghionis...). I get learning, information and pleasure.

 

[PixelRabbit]

This is a tough one, I'm going to defend my thoughts on this and I fear I'm going to sound a bit like a nut lol but here goes!

First I think it might have come across that I don't look at any photographs, as Amolitor said we are inundated by photographs in our daily life, I have some photographers and photo sites etc... on my Facebook so I see shots daily, I look at pretty much every single photograph posted here and follow almost all links to work offsite and examples. I research a lot and come across examples of things I'm working on. Between those things alone that's a pretty good microcosm of a very wide array of photographs and I do find inspiration in some of it.

I cannot disagree with what anyone has said, you all make very valid points and I can see myself looking at more and more work as time goes on. I can also see getting overloaded by the sameness at some point and not looking so much anymore. Everyone is going to be at a different point with it.

I believe everyone who replied (other than Joshua) has been doing this for many years. Some since film days. You guys are refining your craft, I'm still building my base and I have to say I'm very jealous of people who learned pre internet and exif data.

So put yourself back to your first year with the camera in your hand but it's this year.

Would you like to learn by looking at the ocean of work that is out there and following the recipes to recreate your own version rinse repeat.

Or would you like to have a small view of what is out there and learn by doing, with the camera in your hand, making mistakes while you learn.

I have learned more by pushing outside proper exposures in various ways to see what happens, finding things I like, and working with it until I come up with something I am happy with than I ever have by finding an image and trying to recreate my own version of it (which is how I learned how to do proper exposures/pretty pictures in manual mode).

Damn, I do sound like a nut lol I'm not explaining it well so I'll quit now.

 

[12sndsgood]

Here's my view since I havn't been doing it as long as some of the others. Yes, I like to look at all I can. see how they posed the person or shot, see how they lit it, find things that I like, taking bits and pieces of what I see and working that into what im doing. or trying to anyway. I think if you want to be a well rounded photographer you need to be able to take certain shots, know how to get certain shots regardless of wether that will be your "style" or not. if you don't know what is out there you may spend months on learning something you think is new when its just the same old thing other people have been doing. I think those that have the mentality to progress will look at what's available and then try to be diffrent. If you don't know what's out there, you trying to be diffrent may be you just doing the same thing as others but not knowing it.

As you said, you have learned more by pushing yourself outside proper exposures in various ways, and to do that, you had to know what the proper exposure was to push beyond it. If you want to think outside the box, don't you at least need to know where the box is?

 

[amolitor]

There is certainly a balance between looking and doing, as with all skills. We read, we read, we read, but at some point we need to get up and try it out. So do that, and fail (or succeed). Both paths should be pursued in balance, and where that balance is will depend on you.

 

[molested_cow]

I take no shame in looking at other people's wives and girlfriends. Mainly because I don't have one...

I really don't think about this. I look at whatever catches my attention. I also don't really think about how I can replicate specific techniques. Techniques are logical actions. The important thing is how you can turn them into abstract interests.

 

[Derrel]

MOST of my early, beginning-level "book learning" came from The Amateur Photographer's Handbook, a very thick book!, and the Time-Life Library of Photography, a sort of encyclopedic, multi-volume series of books (still readily available used). That, and from reading Popular Photography, and Modern Photography magazines, which back in the 1970's, were often THICK, 200- to 250-page issues! Packed with a LOT of nuts-and-bolts "how-to" articles. Film and how to expose it and meter for it and develop and print it--"film" took up about one-third of all the words in most books. Film was, looking back on it, a major impediment to "photographing". Film always had limits, and had a lot of "process" involved with it....a lot of actual "work" and "money", as well as "time" was required, just to get at the film's images. Learning how to "work with film, and work with printed images" were MAJOR components of amateur photography years ago, and today with d-slr's, the film issues are entirely absent, so there is a MUCH easier path, directly to your PICTURES, today. Wanna' shoot 1,000 frames today? NO PROBLEM....but, at $6.99 per roll of 36 frames of say Ektachrome 100 slide film , that's $194 for film cost (in 1988 prices!!), and at $7.49 per roll E-6 development,that's another $208 for developing costs....for a total of over FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS (1988 dollars!!! MORE at today's prices!) in costs to shoot 1,000 pictures. Now--want PRINTED images from those? Hooo boy.....

My point is that, today, one can learn how to "do photography" reasonably quickly, and affordably, and with almost instant, basically "free" feedback. Because of that, I think if I were going to try and learn photography today, I'd get a couple of very comprehensive source books, and would learn the craft from those books. As for the artistic side...I would get a few books on design and composition, and read those for understanding of all the visual and design "conceptual fundamentals" that underpin the visual arts. The "technical" side of photography is covered by many sources. But the expressive, and the artistic side of photography, is something that is discussed MOSTLY in fine art books, and in courses/books devoted to the visual arts--not in the text books on Digital Photos For Dummies, and those types of "cookbook" photo books. If I were going to turn back the clock to 1973, I would learn the CRAFT from say, Bryan Peterson's books, and learn the artistic principles from college level books on art history. Seriously.

 

[amolitor]

Do you have a favorite art history book that you could recommend, Derrel? You seem to be pretty in tune with the whole "college level fine arts" kind of thing, which is something I want to dig deeper in to myself.

 

[Derrel]

The Harry N. Abrams publishing house has released hundreds of good books on art history and artists. Here's a bit about the Abrams "deal" for those who might wanna know.

If there were to be a fave, it's the classic: Janson's History of Art: The Western Tradition,Volume I (8th Edition): Penelope J.E. Davies,Walter B. Denny,Frima Fox Hofrichter,Joseph F. Jacobs,Ann M. Roberts,David L. Simon: 9780205685189: Amazon.com: Books and the second volume as well.

I'm kinda tweaked about this because two weeks ago at GOodwill, I "passed" on a very,very nice copy of this for $9.99...damnit!!! Shouldda bought it and re-sold it to Powell's...

 

[PixelRabbit]

Derrel, thanks so much for your thoughts on how you would learn today.

I will definitely look into the books you mentioned. What you described is very close to my thoughts, the Internet is an awesome resource but perhaps too much of a good thing for some people to really effectively learn?

 

[Erica.]

I look at other photographers work and want to take more time to look at more of it. Another thing that I spend a lot of time studying is old paintings. Artists like Rembrandt and Van Gogh. I want to incorporate everything that I love into my photos and if I see a trend or style that seems to be popular, I want to make it better and make it more my own. This gives me more creativity I think.

I used to think it was a bad idea to look at others work, like it would make me want to be more like them, or I worried that my work would stop looking like my own, but I realized educating myself on what is going on in the world of photography only makes me want to push harder to develop my own unique style.

 

[Farmclicker]

I am new at photography (and I suck), so I look at others for technique and style.

I live on the Coast of Maine where from May-October we are inundated with tourists. To cater to them we have a plethora of stores and restaurants who have a rather captive clientele.

What has happened lately is, with the economy so bad, people who take photos, know the proprietors of these places and put their photos up for sale at exorbitant prices hoping to make a buck. I do not slight anyone for trying to get by in tough times by selling photos, but the photos are not really stellar. For instance I saw a photo of a seagull on a beach that was a little out of focus and in a cheap plastic frame selling for $200. There was some other photos by the same photographer, but I truly believe if he was to post them on here, they would be shredded by brutally honest constructive criticism.

I truly hate being negative, but as I wait for my food, I often look at these type of photos and critique them. It gives me a local feel for photography prices, matting and framing styles, and subject matter that appeals to the tourist crowd. I also know we have a lot of skilled, talented people in my community, but I also think the display and pray type of photographer here really keeps many tourists from getting a sense of that talent depth.

But I look at these photos and realize people do have it tough right now, and if they need to eat, then I do hope their work sells, but that does not mean I cannot strive to be better.

 

[amolitor]

My take on the $200 photograph of a seagull on the restaurant wall is that it's not really for sale. If someone wanted to buy it, sure, the artist would take the money. The artist might even hold out hopes and dreams. The reality, though, is that the restaurant is getting free wall decor, and that's pretty much it.

 

[The_Traveler]

Derrel and I don't agree totally (I like my photos) but in this idea, our ideas are virtually the same.

My point is that, today, one can learn how to "do photography" reasonably quickly, and affordably, and with almost instant, basically "free" feedback.

I see that most people talk a lot about the craft. 'Craft' stuff doesn't really interest me. I think that many/most/all good artists are good craftsman in some way but craft and art are different.

I am not a particularly good technical photographer; I'd like to get better but only enough to do what I want to do.
The ability to produce technically good photos is at such a high level that a camera set on automatic can do it without a person in the loop.
The ability to produce meaningful art is probably at a much lower proportional level for two reasons: the technical barriers that a driven artist would overcome have disappeared and even bad artists can fool people with flashy trash.

Cameras are essentially very complex pencils; they are tools to produce art.
You can use cameras - and pencils - to do mundane things but they are only steps in the creative process.

I used to spend a lot of time looking at the photography of established photographers. Since the development of the internet though, I look at less and less, since so,so much of what is shown on the various "big photography sites" is very cliche, very of-this-decade, and it seems like people from all over the USA (and indeed, from all across the western world) all want to try and do the same,exact chit.

go to the "big sites", and take a look at landscape photography. For the most part, there is a sameness, a cookie-cutter mentality, in which the same,exact, fricking processing approaches are used by 95% of the people there...you could simply take off the credit lines from Shooter A and swap them with the credit line for shooters B through Z...and nobody would be able to tell who shot what.

Perhaps that's because there is soooo much work being done with such SIMILAR equipment, and there is so,so much instant, world-wide distribution of images, and so many images seem to flow together at the big photo sharing sites. It's not that there is no good photography being done; far from it, there *is* good work, and even great work being done. But the thing is, I don't care what other people are shooting. or how they do it. Or what lights they buy. Or how they do anything.
The thing "today" is that a HUGE preponderance of the images we see are not really photography, or photographs, but heavily manipulated examples of the retoucher's art. AND, we see a lot of images on the web and very SMALL, in magazines. As SOON as something, anything, becomes "hot", or as it were, "cool", or "sick", or "epic!"...the mass of shooters today are on it like stink on ****, and BOOM!...It's all over the world in six months.

Not to sound full of hubris, or anything, but I literally do not CARE very much what anybody in the world is shooting. I just simply do not "care" who's doing what any more.

This is basically it for me.

I look at most pictures and they don't look new to me; I've seen every landscape, every flower, every bridge, every skyline, every football player, every grasshopper, every horse jumping a fence a hundred times, perhaps a hundred thousand times. And almost certainly as good or better.

One of the things that actually keeps me from going to photography shows is disappointment at seeing stuff up close.
It is never, ever, ever as good as I think it might be or hope it might be after seeing it somewhere else - smaller.

I went to see a show at the National Gallery in DC on a famous street photographer; the name escapes me.
The pictures were, imo, ordinary.
They get lots of credit because they were difficult to do and the first to be done but that kind of glory only lasts so far in my mind.

I'm too old to be swayed or influenced; I am only concerned with making pictures the way I want to.