Posted by shotgun mario Advanced critique: So, you want to shoot abandoned buildings. Great. Think for a minute: why do people care about my photos? In all honesty, they likely don't. See, you probably don't care about photos of model trains, or birdhouses, or wedding photos unless you have an invested interest in the subject (you like trains, you're researching birdhouses, or that's your cousin's wedding), OR the photo actually stirs and emotion in you. If you just try to capture objects or scenes while you're exploring, you're likely to only ever intrigue people with a disposition towards exploring and abandoned buildings (us), or at best, people who will say "oh that's neat" if they're being courteous (like your grandma). It's easy to capture subjects and show it to people interested in that subject and find an audience. Doesn't really mean jack shit though for being a great photographer. Fuck that. Move beyond that. Say something with your photos. Don't hope something good will come out of your camera; decide to actively make something that everyone wants to enjoy. Did you know that one of the greatest failures of cinema was the advent of sound? Silent films went from beautiful, complex, physically demanding performance drama working off of opera and theater that audiences of all countries could enjoy... into loud, static, dialogue-heavy films that only a single-language speaking people could understand, and took YEARS for them to learn how to develop story strong enough to counter this downfall. DO NOT go for the minority audience with the weaker concepts; become a stronger photographer by going for honest, specific, universal appeal. Here is the basics I've learned, but extending my process (cartoonist) towards photography: 1. pick your subject. A house. A room. A chunk of railroad track. 2. decide on an emotion you want to illicit in your audience. Joy. Loneliness. Frustration. Contempt. Overwhelmed. Dwarfed. Outdated. The more specific, the better, but don't think you have to decide immediately. Work towards something. 3. Try to guide the audience towards that feeling through your composition, exposure, focus, depth of field, color decisions, post production, etc. 4. Go back home, look through your shoot, identify what features of your process aided in that emotion, and what didn't. Refine, rinse, repeat. This is BY FAR the most important step. Become your own harshest critic, and look to your own opinion over all others. Basically, understand that your viewfinder is a paintbrush, and it's your job to guide your audience into feeling something when they look at your snapshots; something that is the intention of the artist. Fuck that post-post-modernist art school bullshit saying that the subject needs to be ambiguous so the audience can create their own meaning. Those people don't know shit, and that's why they'll be forgotten to the sands of time. You see, right now you might think that that the camera in your hands captures reality, but this couldn't be farther from the truth; the camera is there to lie in the way you want it to lie. All the camera does is capture little bits of reality that you tell it to, and then rearrange and give meaning however you see fit. Cameras do not tell truth, they tell what the artist wants them to say. If you do not know what you want to say, they will not speak anything to anyone, and no one will have interest. Accept that there is no absolute reality, and move beyond that into something greater, and has more magic. Anything less and you're just a boring photo journalist.

What he said! I LOVE what you wrote here, Mario. So true.

Posted by shotgun mario Advanced critique: So, you want to shoot abandoned buildings. Great. Think for a minute: why do people care about my photos? In all honesty, they likely don't. See, you probably don't care about photos of model trains, or birdhouses, or wedding photos unless you have an invested interest in the subject (you like trains, you're researching birdhouses, or that's your cousin's wedding), OR the photo actually stirs and emotion in you. If you just try to capture objects or scenes while you're exploring, you're likely to only ever intrigue people with a disposition towards exploring and abandoned buildings (us), or at best, people who will say "oh that's neat" if they're being courteous (like your grandma). It's easy to capture subjects and show it to people interested in that subject and find an audience. Doesn't really mean jack shit though for being a great photographer. Fuck that. Move beyond that. Say something with your photos. Don't hope something good will come out of your camera; decide to actively make something that everyone wants to enjoy. Did you know that one of the greatest failures of cinema was the advent of sound? Silent films went from beautiful, complex, physically demanding performance drama working off of opera and theater that audiences of all countries could enjoy... into loud, static, dialogue-heavy films that only a single-language speaking people could understand, and took YEARS for them to learn how to develop story strong enough to counter this downfall. DO NOT go for the minority audience with the weaker concepts; become a stronger photographer by going for honest, specific, universal appeal. Here is the basics I've learned, but extending my process (cartoonist) towards photography: 1. pick your subject. A house. A room. A chunk of railroad track. 2. decide on an emotion you want to illicit in your audience. Joy. Loneliness. Frustration. Contempt. Overwhelmed. Dwarfed. Outdated. The more specific, the better, but don't think you have to decide immediately. Work towards something. 3. Try to guide the audience towards that feeling through your composition, exposure, focus, depth of field, color decisions, post production, etc. 4. Go back home, look through your shoot, identify what features of your process aided in that emotion, and what didn't. Refine, rinse, repeat. This is BY FAR the most important step. Become your own harshest critic, and look to your own opinion over all others. Basically, understand that your viewfinder is a paintbrush, and it's your job to guide your audience into feeling something when they look at your snapshots; something that is the intention of the artist. Fuck that post-post-modernist art school bullshit saying that the subject needs to be ambiguous so the audience can create their own meaning. Those people don't know shit, and that's why they'll be forgotten to the sands of time. You see, right now you might think that that the camera in your hands captures reality, but this couldn't be farther from the truth; the camera is there to lie in the way you want it to lie. All the camera does is capture little bits of reality that you tell it to, and then rearrange and give meaning however you see fit. Cameras do not tell truth, they tell what the artist wants them to say. If you do not know what you want to say, they will not speak anything to anyone, and no one will have interest. Accept that there is no absolute reality, and move beyond that into something greater, and has more magic. Anything less and you're just a boring photo journalist.

Thank you so much, that's amazing advice.

Posted by shotgun mario