{"id":668,"date":"2009-10-23T18:32:23","date_gmt":"2009-10-24T02:32:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/2009\/10\/23\/exercising-your-creative-muscle\/"},"modified":"2018-09-09T19:00:44","modified_gmt":"2018-09-10T03:00:44","slug":"exercising-your-creative-muscle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/2009\/10\/23\/exercising-your-creative-muscle\/","title":{"rendered":"Exercising Your Creative Muscle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Remember when you first started driving?\u00a0 Just about everything you did behind the wheel was a conscious act \u2013 steering into a curve, breaking for a red light, backing out of the garage, whatever.\u00a0 Everything required a conscious effort.\u00a0 But now, those things are all automatic and you can safely drive from point A to point B without even once thinking about the physical act of driving.\u00a0 It\u2019s a part of you.<\/p>\n

If you learned to play a musical instrument you went through the same process.\u00a0 I played piano and at first had to think about every key I pressed.\u00a0 But as time went by it wasn\u2019t which key needed to be pressed any more but how to interpret the phrase.\u00a0 The fingers automatically went to where they were supposed to go.<\/p>\n

Athletes also experience the same thing.\u00a0 For example a tennis player at first needs to concentrate on every part of a backhand swing or a serve.\u00a0 But after a while it it all becomes muscle memory.<\/p>\n

The single most important thing that causes this effect to happen is frequent practice, usually daily.<\/p>\n

But what does this have to do with photography?\u00a0 Well, this applies on two levels and I\u2019m specifically referring to photography in the field.\u00a0 The first is the operation of our instrument, our camera.\u00a0 At first things such as exposure, focus, depth of field, filtration, etc. are all conscious acts.\u00a0 And this doesn\u2019t touch on all the additional functionality modern digital cameras provide such as highlight tone priority, high ISO noise reduction and on and on.<\/p>\n

But the pros that we all admire talk about the camera becoming second nature, an extension of the photographer\u2019s mind and eye.\u00a0 And sure enough, through repeated and frequent practice the operation of the camera becomes second nature. When confronted with a situation one responds by making the appropriate adjustments.<\/p>\n

The second area is a bit different and has nothing to do with the seamless manipulation of our technology.\u00a0 It has to do with the creative process.\u00a0 I\u2019m thinking specifically about composition.<\/p>\n

When I teach workshops I introduce the participants to about 15 or 20 \u2018principles of composition.\u2019\u00a0 These range from fill the frame, off center, and rule of thirds to golden rule, color, texture, pattern and much more.\u00a0 Now most great photographers will say there are no rules of composition.\u00a0 And one certainly doesn\u2019t want to fall into the practice of mechanically applying the these principles.\u00a0 But they are important to understand so that they become second nature and also so that you know when you\u2019re consciously violating them.<\/p>\n

Enter the Canon PowerShot G11, my new toy.\u00a0 You\u2019ve heard about chess players that play lightning rounds where they have a ridiculously short amount of time to make each move, something on the order of 15 seconds.\u00a0 The idea is to sharpen their game.<\/p>\n

Well, a similar technique can be applied with the G11 or any point and shoot.\u00a0 The idea is to walk through a picturesque area looking for compositions.\u00a0 When you see one, frame it, make quick adjustments and shoot it.\u00a0 Then then move on.\u00a0 For each image you will make snap decisions about the composition.\u00a0 In other words, you very quickly arrange the elements in the scene into a pleasing pattern and then grab the shot.\u00a0 You don\u2019t refine and refine the composition, you don\u2019t overanalyze it.\u00a0 You just make some quick decisions and go with it.\u00a0 The goal is to work in lots of compositions in a very short period of time.<\/p>\n

\"(c)<\/a><\/p>\n

Digicams are ideal for this exercise because they\u2019re so easy to use.\u00a0 Shooting in AUTO mode is also a great idea because then you aren\u2019t distracted by exposure and focusing considerations.\u00a0 You can focus entirely on composition.\u00a0 (If you come across a composition that you feel has potential you can always switch\u00a0 to another mode and shoot in RAW \u2013 if you\u2019re shooing a digicam that supports RAW file formats).\u00a0 Also, you\u2019re mostly shooting hand held and viewing the image in the LCD screen.\u00a0 And because of the LCD, chances are you won\u2019t see the image clearly enough to make any fine adjustments.\u00a0 But that\u2019s fine because you\u2019ll be attending to just the major elements of the image and that\u2019s a good habit to get into.<\/p>\n

One thing that is helpful is if your LCD screen is capable of displaying \u2018rule of thirds\u2019 lines.\u00a0 Those are lines that divide the LCD screen into 9 sections with two horizontal and two vertical lines placed evenly between the respective edges.\u00a0 You can always line elements up on the lines or their intersections or you can placed them elsewhere.\u00a0 Your decision, while a quick one, is intentional and having the \u2018rule of thirds\u2019 lines visible on the LCD just makes the decisions more apparent.<\/p>\n

One last thing is to be sure you review your images.\u00a0 You can review them by yourself but better yet, review them with another photographer, preferably one that whose work you admire.\u00a0 This is all about the process of mastering composition and the feedback you receive will greatly accelerate your progress.<\/p>\n

\"(c)<\/a><\/p>\n

So grab your point and shoot and head out to the local park or just around the house.\u00a0 Indoors, outdoors, it doesn\u2019t really matter.\u00a0 What matters is that you exercise the creative muscle of your mind and the more often you do that the faster you will mature as a photographer.<\/p>\n

To see more of my photographs click here.<\/a><\/p>\n

Join me on an upcoming workshop.<\/a><\/p>\n

Become a fan on Facebook and follow along.<\/a><\/p>\n

(613)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Describes an exercise to develop your eye for seeing compositions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,4,6],"tags":[101,13,21,20,93],"class_list":["post-668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-how-to-articles","category-journal","tag-creativity","tag-photography","tag-southwest","tag-utah","tag-workshop"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Nl7-aM","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=668"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3916,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668\/revisions\/3916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}