 This episode of The Photographic Eye is brought to you by Squarespace. I believe that the best way to improve your photography is rather unsurprisingly, to look at as many photographs as is possible. Much like a chef tastes different ingredients and explores and discovers cuisines and cultures from around the world to improve their own recipe making. So too should the photographer who wants to become a more rounded image maker seek out inspiration from as many genres in photography as possible. How's it, how's it? When you started photography, you were no doubt given photographs to look at by people who were trying to get you into photography and they were saying these are the great photos that you should look at and be inspired by because they're fantastic. And you were probably nodded your head and gone, yeah, yeah, that's really amazing. But truthfully, you kind of really didn't know why. Why was this picture any good? A fantastic example of this occurred on the channel here recently on a video where I was talking about this very famous photograph by Robert Frank of The People on the Bus. And I said that I didn't really have much impact to me. Now, I was looking at that through the lens of how I first experienced that photograph which was as a young photographer and I only interpreted it through the lens of the language that I had at the time which was all technical things. I looked at its composition and the use of tones and all that sort of thing. And I wasn't looking at the wider perception of it which of course is about segregation in the US. And the comment on the video reminded me that his interpretation of that Bus photograph is very different because he experienced that personally. And this is at the heart of what I believe is a problem when we are looking for inspiration in photographs is that we are not really oftentimes ready for everything that the photograph is able to offer us. If you find that this is the case that you've looked at various famous photographs and they haven't really, or you don't understand it's just like, I don't get it. What's the problem? Why is this picture so great? It's okay, right? It doesn't really make a huge amount of difference. It's just that sometimes you don't have the tools available to seek out, to pull out all the meat and the inspiration that's in that photograph. This isn't really super surprising because quite often in photography, especially when you are beginning photography, you're taught the basics. You're taught sort of exposures and f-stops and shutter speeds and all that sort of stuff. So that is the language that you use to analyze a photograph. Like much of that Robert Frank photo, I wasn't looking at the bigger picture. I was looking at the compositional elements. And then of course there's the issue that a lot of famous photography has an awful amount of baggage attached to it. Because it comes with stuff. It comes with people who have over the years told us how you should interpret this particular photograph. So this famous photography has all this baggage. And so we combine that with the fact that you're kind of thinking about images in terms of gear. It's no wonder that it could be quite confusing. Especially when a lot of work about photography, when writing is about photography, if you're going to be extremely dense and they're, you know, very earnest. And you know, Susan Sontag and Rene Baths and people like that are all very interesting. But it's not like reading. The more that you watch these kind of videos, you're going to start moving beyond simply responding in some sort of gut animal way to photographs and being more aware of why this is happening and why these things are moving you in a certain way. And of course then being able to channel that into your own photography. And that's a fantastic skill really that is so worthwhile in developing. I believe that there are two distinct areas in photography that we work on. There's the technical side of things. And that's a fairly, I won't say basic level but it's easy to understand. It's easy to grasp because it's quantifiable things. And then there's the more ethereal kind of thing which is how we speak visually. What language do we use when we photograph a subject? It's this second stage, this etherealness that is I believe at the heart of creating photographs. I don't want to say meaty and worthwhile because that's certainly not the case. But photographs have some sort of substance to them that hold our attention for a little while. I'm reminded about a interview that I listened to recently with a writer who said that the big problem or a problem that is made when people talk about great writers is that they confuse the tools so the words that people use with being a great writer that a great writer must use floral language. They must use highfalutin words that sweep us majestically across the page. When the real thing that makes a great writer is because they have something to say. And this is very similar in photography. You can be a technically amazing photographer. You can build this technical photography in the entire world. But if you don't have anything to say with your photographs, then as far as I'm concerned they're going to start lacking any sort of real impact. They're gonna lack some sort of gravitas. And that's not to say that all photographs should be important and that they should be worthy photographs because that of course isn't the case. But if you do want to explore that side of things if you want that to be your photography to have a message to convey at least a feeling to evoke a feeling in somebody who's looking at it then I think it's crucial that you spend time going and revisiting the photographs that you saw when you were a younger photographer or new photographer that didn't really have any impact on you, that didn't give you inspiration in the way that you've felt that they could because you didn't have the tools, you didn't have the visual skillset to really pick apart and to see how that photograph moved you. And this is kind of what I think so few photographers ever really do is to revisit with new eyes, with eyes that are now more mature and look at the photographs. Really look at them, look at their own photographs. Look at photographs that are famous but I think crucially go back and look at your own photographs because within that, that's you, that's your voice in there and I want you to be able to tease it out. See now that you know a bit more what is in that photograph? How could you've done something a little bit differently? How could you read photograph that scene now knowing what you know? This is gonna be the best way for you to learn to improve your photography because you are essentially teaching yourself and we all know that the best way to learn something is to teach it. Creating websites used to be such a chore, you needed to know so much, coding, name servers, all that sort of thing but these days, Squarespace have got you back. With Squarespace, which I use for my own studio website and the new photographic eyesight, it is so simple to create your own designer, modern, friendly, easy to use website. 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Just use the link in the description box and when you're ready to go live with your website you will save 10% off your first purchase of website or domain. Books are a wonderful resource to improve our photography and there's things like this. This is a textbook called The History of Photography and it is one of my old student books. You can see it's quite well-thumbed. Now that's a great resource but it is academic and again it's talking about these things like the ideas of the deep academic ideas. So one of the things that I love to do to find inspiration from unknown sources and to be able to explore photographs without any of that baggage is to go on to Amazon and go and list all the monographs from cheapest first so you find all the stuff that people are trying to get rid of because it didn't sell for whatever and yes, there's a lot of dross in there to be said but occasionally you get books like this. You know, this is a book called Vista and it's by Andy Earle as photographer and it's wonderful. It's some music photography and it's some pictures of chickens with motion blur and it is just a wonderful way of discovering photography that's new to you. Of course you don't have to just go on to Amazon. You can of course go to book fairs, to secondhand bookstores. I found some amazing books about photography and also sort of monographs for basically nothing. So keep your eyes open. If a photograph just kind of for whatever reason just grabs you. I just bought this on the strength of the cover alone. Then buy it, you know, you're not gonna come out short especially when it's only a few pounds. So I would highly recommend that you do that and that you also then go back and look at all your photographs. Revisit these things with fresh eyes and see what you can now find. If you want to improve how you speak through your photographs then click on this video here. It's an excellent resource to get you starting to learn the language of photography. So your photographs are gonna have far more impact and more meaning for the viewer.