All posts by James

How I See Things

Something I’ve really enjoyed about getting back into photography, is that I find it refueling my creativity.  When producing artwork from your imagination, it’s not just coming out of thin air. You have to rely on your past experiences, observations, and understanding of how things work. When I take pictures, I’m looking to observe and Identify what it is that makes something appealing.

I’ll use this image of train tracks I took in the rocky mountains for my first example:

SPT_TrainTracks

I’d bore us both just using text to explain what it is I think is working well in this shot. Instead, I made this gif, illustrating How I See Things :)

HIST_TrainTracks

Your eye naturally wants to follow paths and anything it can visually connect as lines when looking about an image. Knowing this, I pay attention to where the lines in a scene are directing the viewer to look. I don’t want them to slide my audience right off the picture. You know that photo that doesn’t hold your attention? It’s often because the image itself is telling you not to look at it :)

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FlockDraw.com

I stumbled across this collaborative drawing website. Sent my college buddy Jeff Bellio a link, and this was what happened:

jeffAndJames_flockDraw_doodle1This is what happens when you unleash our brains upon the same canvas at the same time! Neither of us has a plan, neither of us really knows what is going on.

jeffAndJames_flockDraw_doodle5One of us will usually start by drawing a few large shapes, then the other will start to fill in what he thinks they should be.

jeffAndJames_flockDraw_doodle8We have no qualms with the other drawing over top anything we started. It’s such an amalgamation, that I can hardly remember what I contributed vs. what Jeff added.

 

 

 

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