Viewing card

[mrca]

I'm sure many of you are stuck at home or even in your house or apartment. Nothing to photo there, right? This is the perfect time to make one of the best photo tools and it is free. Get a file card or piece of cardboard and cut a 2"x3" opening in it. That is the ratio of a 35 mm sensor. Close one eye and look through it, zoom holding it further, go wide angle pulling it closer. Here's the drill. Sit or stand in one place and find 5 or 10 photos with the card. Do this every day til this incarceration is over and you will have really developed that "eye" I keep hearing about. Go in your back yard or take it on a walk. It gets your itchy trigger finger off the shutter and gets you carefully examining what is in the frame. Look for things that don't add to the photo, find a way to move to eliminate them or consider how you will take them out in post. It also helps seeing like a camera, one eye and a rectangular frame. I like a piece of black cardboard and cut a 24mm x 36 mm opening. With that the distance from your eye to the card is the mm lens it represents. You can mark you lens lengths along the long side, 35, 50, 85, 105 and note the distance from your eye. Helps seeing what that lens sees. A fabulous seascape photographer with a gallery on the ocean takes a month every year and goes out with his viewing card for a full month.

 

[Original katomi]

At the risk of busting your bubble,
A method I have been using for thirty years is to use the thumb and first finger of each hand touching finger and thumb of the other hand.
First saw this method used whilst on a film set as an extra

 

[mrca]

Yes, I have been using that when card not available...for 55 years. But it is neither as accurate and is ackward. You won't hold that position for long. But the same concept. The advantage of a card is you can hold it up for minutes and search for shots. The hand method is great to check a shot when you have it. This drill is about FINDING shots where you thought there were none. I get tired of hearing newbies acting like they have to travel to someplace to find new shots. As the Yosemite teacher who used this method used to say, I don't want to take photos of new things, I want to take photos of old things in a new way.