Expose yourself

One of the best ways to become a better photographer is to expose yourself to a lot of good photography.

In this post I share some of the people and websites I look to for inspiration. Click on the highlighted name to access the website. I hope you expose yourself to as much photography as you can and ask yourself these questions:

How did they do that?
How can I do that?
What would I do different?

Something I do when I study a photograph is to look all over the work and imagine I am that photographer looking through the lens at that moment. What am I seeing? What is the “right now” moment the photographer was waiting for?

Someone who continues to influence me is landscape and humanist photographer Tim Sutherland. Tim is an amazing person who has helped me morph from being a good news photographer to a photographer who can capture beauty and feeling and not just a story. Just being around Tim is an experience.

During a show at his gallery I examined each piece the way I described earlier and when I had a moment with Tim I took him to my favorite piece in the show. It was Tuskany Trees, a black and white of tall trees, which we now have hanging in our home. Knowing Tim meticulously hunts, frames and waits for the perfect shot, I told him how impressed I was at his alignment of the trees and the perfect angle of the light source. He grinned and said “Oh, Yeah. I took that one out the window of a moving bus while traveling in Italy.” I wanted to bow and back away.

Another photographer I love is Chrystaline Randazzo. Chrystal photographs nature and landscapes beautifully. However, her skill in capturing emotion in portraits is startling. She is of the Tim Sutherland School of Awesome and her mentor shows in much of her work.

Daily Dose of Imagery is a photoblog project by award winning photographer Sam Javanrouh, who posted a photograph every day for 10 years until he suspended the project July 2013. This is a good way to study a lot of work on different themes from one artist. From his main page you can subscribe to receive a photo each day by email or, if you dare, access the massive archive.

Subscribe by email or Face Book to Frameplay and you will receive an email each day featuring a fantastic photograph and a brief description of the photographer. This is a good way to expose yourself to a lot of different photographers and themes. Frameplay will sometimes post "Three On a Theme," which is one photograph from three different photographers on the same theme.

And finally, Mark Hirsch created That Tree, a collection of photographs of the same, single tree taken every day for 365 days but from different perspectives. That Tree is not only beautiful and insightful, but a useful project to show how the same subject can be photographed in a kaleidoscope of ways.

Get your imaginations cranking, Ninjas, and shoot something cool today. And let me know if you have favorite photography sites you would like to share.