Being clear about your intentions for a photograph before you actually press the shutter button is the first step in creating images that say what you want them to say.
Make your intentions plain
Why monochrome?
Working in monochrome means you can’t rely on colour contrasts to separate elements in your photographs. You have to use the light and capture differences in luminance to produce an image with impact.
Simplify, simplify! Pictures with impact
One of the hardest lessons to learn when starting with photography is not how to fit everything relevant into your pictures, but how to leave everything else out. Here are three steps I follow when I’m trying to create images with impact.
It’s all about the camera
How the obsession with camera hardware gets in the way of creating interesting photographs.
Landscape pictures are what, exactly?
Well, that’s an easy question to answer isn’t it? Landscape is a picture of natural beauty somewhere in the countryside. Isn’t it? There, done. We’ve put that in its box, move on. But not so fast. That just raises more questions than it answers.
Don’t just look. See!
“Seeing Things” by Joel Meyerowitz was conceived as a “Kid’s Guide to Looking at Photographs”, but it works for older kids too. And why is this just a kids’ book? If you can get past the sub title on the cover page, this is a well written introduction to photographs that might just trigger a few of your own brain cells into action.
Pose questions, don’t provide answers
In a blink this book by Henry Carroll, apparently for beginners, with pages of detail on how to choose shutter speeds and apertures resolved in a flash how I should be taking photographs for maximum impact.