 Pablo Picasso allegedly said that you need to learn the rules like a pro in order to break them like an artist. How's it how's it? In the world at large we are confronted with rules all the time, the rules of the road, rules of sports games and learning photography is treated in much the same way. We are taught some rules and we consider those rules to be immovable, that we have to create photographs within those very strict confines. Today we're going to transform you into a photographic James Dean taking you from a straight laced rule abiding photographer into a rebel but unlike James Dean you're going to be a rebel with a cause and that cause is going to be the pursuit of artistic expression of challenging the rules and creating fantastic photograph. In the early 1980s I was sitting there with my dad and he was showing me how to use his camera and he taught me my first rule in photography and that was to always stand with my with the sun behind my back you know lighting the subject and I think we've all seen that piece of advice at some point in our photographic career you know I know you have you have over there right and and it's well-meaning you know it's a good foundation but it's extremely limiting because photography obviously is about light and light is an integral part of taking images but if you only stand with it facing one direction think about you you can't do anything else can you so you can turn around you can photograph into the sunlight you can photograph with with rays of light coming down through there the whole point if you want to do this is to do it and this goes for all of these rules is to do it with intent you can break rules so long as it enhances the photograph and enhances the image it makes it come alive somehow don't just photograph something willy-nilly and just say well I you know I don't care about the rules because that's not enhancing your images a great number of these rules come from places like camera clubs and judging competitions where they are trying to quantify an image something creative into a set of standards that is measurable across all of photographs and one of the things that comes of this and is a great thing in the wedding photography world especially are verticals that all verticals and all horizontals should be dead straight the horizon on a landscape must be completely flat or then it's just wrong right now granted with this one if the horizon is just a little bit off then it does look a little bit wrong but if you like me or a big fan of say Dutch tilt right then you just go like this the whole time one leg is short and the other then that's okay you need to do these things with purpose and that's the difference if it looks like you have done something on purpose then that's okay so you know don't restrict yourself and thinking that a landscape horizon must be dead straight or that the sides of a building should be completely parallel you know if that was the case and everybody would only be allowed to photograph buildings with with you know field cameras with with movement so it's one of those things that I think people get hit up on so much don't worry about it so much man just you know just change it up however you feel about it but do it on purpose do it so it looks like you have made that decision and not that you were ever so slightly slack since the advent of digital there's been a lot of pixel peeping for example because I don't know where it comes from and it's always been around ever since I've certainly picked up a digital camera is that we were obsessed with sharpness that sharpness is everything and nowadays you have obviously people blowing up their images into the you know into just 500 percent on the screen and looking for the for the smallest imperfections and there be has become an obsession with sharpness that if an image is not sharp then somehow something is wrong you are letting the side down it's like a sign that you are not investing enough in image quality and of course that's a nonsense because back in the day you know the film stocks were not sharp if you wanted really sharp you know you would use very slow speed film you would use but if you shot Kodak TMZ or heavy now there's a 3200 ISO black and white film the grain on it was like golf balls so it wasn't going to be sharp so the idea of sharpness is a relatively new thing that an image if it's not sharp isn't very good of course the images can be you know a little bit fuzzy around the edges imperfections have always been part of photography don't worry about it if your image is not pin shop if it's slightly out of focus by mistake then sure that's a mistake but this is what we are talking about is how having the photographs photograph with intent with purpose don't be afraid to have something blurry don't be afraid to photograph with a holger all these things are options for you to express and for you to try out a couple of years ago I was doing some headshots for a company and one of the options in regards to cropping that I showed them were square cropped images that chopped a little bit of the top of their heads off so you could feel the frame with their faces a bit more and I quite liked them I thought they had some impact there was somewhat reminiscent of one or two images that I enjoyed seeing in the past and the client came back to me and they said oh well we don't like these ones because I don't need to tell you as a photographer this is wrong because you've chopped their head off now that's a fairly extreme example of having this idea that certain things cannot be cut off that that limbs and figures and bodies and what have you should be cropped at certain very specific places now there are places where if you crop a limb that it feels a bit odd you know so cropping somebody's legs at the ankles feels a bit strange but you are being restricted if you think that those are the only places that you can crop a figure so don't be afraid to experiment with odd cropping with with chopping into things or cutting off ideas it can actually add a lot of interest and mystique and intrigue into your photograph now with this particular rule how to break it a lot of it comes down to your gut feeling how does it feel to you right does it feel that there's something a little bit off and not in a good kind of way about the image if so that probably will suggest to you that the cropping is quite not right but if you think it enhances the photograph then by means try it see what comes out it feel free to experiment with bizarre croppings that rather neatly brings us on to composition and now composition of course could be a whole subject in itself and in fact if you'd like to have me do an episode about composition and the basics of composition how to design a photograph let me know in the comments below i'd be more than happy to put something together for you composition is tricky because it's the basis for a photograph that is held together that it's like the framework of one where all the other sort of thing elements are hung on and if you just compose an image without any thought to composition then it just falls apart so that's that's probably the number one hurdle there so what i would suggest that you do is rather than go for the obvious composition or the composition that you get told that you should use it in it for certain subjects like rules of thirds are a good example you know if you shoot a very flat horizon of a landscape there's nothing much else and you put the interesting piece on a third that's a very basic one to consider and you photographed it in a in a in a landscape format so think about how you could change that one up you know what happens if you photograph in a vertical format by putting the tree dead set in the middle have a symmetrical sort of thing so play with people's expectations of how the composition is supposed to look if that's something that you know is a phrase that you know we are supposed to photograph certain things in certain ways so play with people's expectations in head and shoulders sort of sort of profile kind of portrait traditionally the person should be looking into the broad part of the frame so the the part where there's more space for them to look into I however prefer to do it the other way around I like for the person to look into short part of the frame and you know it grates some people's gears but I don't so what right in my photographs I like them and I understand that they should go around the other way but I don't care because I prefer it this way around this is showing in how we we can approach the issue with people moaning at you about oh your rules or your images don't uh they you don't know the rules right if you could explain the rule if you could say oh well I understand what it's supposed to be like this but I've chosen to do it this way then then you're all good man that's that's the way it should be right know the rules know them like a pro don't get hung up on them and then we can break them like an artist and maybe one day you'll be a bit bit like Picasso as well as a little bonus for getting all the way to the end here hit the subscribe button and I will give one subscriber a free one-to-one mentoring session with myself a photographer who helped redefine the rule set of street photography was William Klein check out the video here that I've linked to and is again in the description box below thank you ever so much for watching and I'll see you again soon