 If you feel there is something lacking in your photographs that's holding you back and there's a mysterious element that seems to be gone missing, then visual communication is what you are looking for. Now, it is impossible to overstate the importance of visual communication in your photography. And I'm so pleased that Ted Forbes mentioned it in his channel recently in a video about visual communication and regular viewers of this channel also know that we talk about visual communication an awful lot. So what is this mysterious, almost academic sounding term? How's it? How's it? I understand why a lot of people don't really pursue visual communications as something to look at because it does sound like something that people in sweaters and stroking their beards will sit around and discuss in a very kind of earnest and boring way. When really, all it actually is, it is simply a very broad umbrella of techniques that you can employ to give your photographs meaning. There is a loaded word meaning, you know, and we're not talking here about life changing photographs that win Pulitzer Prizes and embed themselves into the cultural consciousness. Now, what I'm talking about here is photographs that simply move somebody, that they provoke an emotional response to the person who's looking at your photograph. And if that photograph is not conveying at least something, then the person who's going to look at it is just going to see a blanche of shapes that are just kind of thrown together. And if you're not familiar with a blanche, it's like a kind of really soft pudding kind of thing. So let's not have blanche photographs, let's have crafted things. And that actually is an excellent way of thinking about it. We're taking elements that are available to all of us, not just the select few, and we are designing a photograph. So think about it like that way, you are going to start learning how to see elements around you that you can put into your photos to convey a certain message. Think about it like a like when you watch a film, the director doesn't have to put a subtitle up on the screen that says, This is a spooky place. They use lighting and angles and camera views and all that sort of thing to convey a feeling. And this is what you are doing with visual communication is that you're learning to convey a certain meaning to the viewer. Now, the way that the viewer interprets that would be open to some, you know, sort of changeable nurse, because obviously, so much of the way that a viewer interprets your photographs is beyond our control, because they will bring in their their cultural references, their own personal experiences. And so we have to kind of not worry about that too much, but just focus on the message that we want to convey. And hopefully it will be a starting point for the people who look at our photographs and encourage them to spend more time thinking about our photographs, because we at least have given them some some guidelines to say, Well, this is how I thought about this particular subject. And that's kind of what we're going to start looking at today is not the whole spectrum of all the techniques available to you, but the single most important step that you need to take to unlock all this potential in seeing the world in your own unique way. That's an important thing to think about your unique way. Right? So I'm not going to pepper this video with lots of examples of photographs, because that somewhat defeats the point of what we're talking about here, which is which is getting rid of preconceptions so we can we can move forward. If I show you lots of examples of photos, I'm simply taking one set of preconceived ideas that you have about things and planting others. And we don't want that. Right? This exercise and this whole way of thinking is about being unique to you. What is your take in the world? How do you see it? Right? Because we all see the world differently. And that's what makes photography such a wonderful, vibrant art form is that we can be expressive in so many different ways. And I'm tired of seeing people just copy photographs that they pick up a camera. And they go, I want to be a photographer. And they go and they look at technical things. And they follow a list of do this, do that and set your sliders to this and you'll get this result. And that will only take you so far. This is about unlocking everything that's here, the way that you see the world, which is where the true beauty lies. It doesn't lie in in bocker and color toning and all sorts of things. It lies in your unique vision. And I want to help you bring that up because we all have this ability within you. It is beautiful and wonderful. And you are so, so capable of expressing yourself with joy. It doesn't matter if you picked up a camera 10, 10 days ago or 10 years ago or, you know, 100 years ago, is anybody right? It doesn't matter. All of us are on this wonderful journey of learning to see the world in a unique way. And it never changes. There is no goal. You can't win photography. All we can do is enjoy the journey. And it's worthwhile to revisit these starting points again and again and again throughout our career regularly to wipe away the preconceptions, the ideas that have taken root in our mind and to challenge them and to think about, well, how can I change this? And will my photography or how can I move my photography forward? So where did those preconceptions originate from? Who planted them in our minds? And unfortunately, it's human nature, right? When we are babies, we see the world. Everything's amazing. Oh, you know, this pair of glasses. Wow, it is the most amazing thing ever in the history of the world. And so we start seeing things interest us. And over time, our parents help us to categorize those shapes so that you see a round circle and you say, well, that's a ball. Okay, that's a ball. That's a cat. That's a dog. That's a mummy. That's daddy. You know, all these sort of things. And as we grow up, we can become more adept at casual viewing that we stop paying attention to the things that we see every day, a car, you know, horse, things like that. And we just go, well, that shape represents a car. And we put them over there. And a great way to illustrate this point is to if you close your eyes for a second and you think about a tree. Now, no matter where you are in the world, you're going to have the same rough shape of a tree, a trunk and branches, you know, the actual tree may be a palm tree or a palm tree or whatever. It doesn't matter. But you pictured what for most of us represents a tree. And if you were a photographer, going out to take a photograph of a tree, a lazy photographer, you would just simply go outside, you would look around, find a shape that in your mind conforms with what the shape of a tree looks like. And then you would just photograph it. Job done. I photographed a tree, because I was supposed to photograph a tree. But the guy next to you, who's taking photographs, and you go back and you look at the photograph and you go, wow, that's amazing. How did you, I was standing right next to how did you see that? It's because that photographer was open to seeing the world differently, to seeing that the possibilities inherent in that tree, right? So they photographed it in as many ways. So that the tree is still physically a tree, but the shape and the form of it has changed. And the way that it, the way that it changes how we see the photograph has morphed. And then we go, oh, that's a tree. Wow. Right. So it's grabbed our attention. And then we recognize it for something that it is, but it's held our attention. And that's kind of the starting point, right? So the next time that you are out and about and photographing or wanting to just exercise your eyes, and these are the best tools that you have for creating photographs, take something mundane. Edward Weston did the same thing. He took a pepper, just an everyday pepper and photograph it repeatedly, many different peppers he photographed, because he saw within that object that most of us would have just sort of dismissed if we were looking to create photographs, a study, a study in shape and form and texture and lighting. Now those photographs are, they are revered, right? But imagine if that day he'd gone, oh, I've got nothing to photograph, you know? Oh, Ansel, he's going down Yosemite and, you know, Paul Strand's going off to the Hebrides and I'm just stuck at home with the shopping. Do you see, right? We are so quick to dismiss what's around us as potential for photographs that we lose so much opportunity. And that's what I want us to stop doing. Instead of going like, oh, I need to have like, you know, sweeping vistas or something like that, see the inherent beauty in your shoes, in, you know, in this collection of stuff behind me. There's Hello, Orange Cat, right? There's a pot plant and all sorts of things like that. Those things can be wonderful and intriguing if we present them to the viewer in a way that they are not familiar with. As soon as you challenge their preconceptions by having taken yours out of the picture, then your photographs have meaning, right? Because they're making the person think. They're making them question what is it they're seeing. That's the beauty of this. This is why when you hit creative blocks and you get this, this heartened with your photography is that the answer doesn't lie in, in new lenses or, you know, special effects, techniques and things. The answer lies in improving how we see the world. And the more the better we are at us seeing the world, then the better we are at conveying a message to the people who are seeing our photographs. I understand that it's hard to throw off preconceptions because they are so ingrained in us that they are part of how we see the world casually, right? And, you know, when you first picked up a camera, you said, oh, what should I photograph? And you photograph the things that you thought you should, the things that you saw all around you. And you kind of went, oh, well, they photograph them. That's what I am supposed to be photographing. And, and those ideas are so hardwired into us that when we challenge them, we go, oh, this is not working. This is not working. This feels wrong. I don't, it doesn't feel quite right. And what have you, and when those feelings in you surface and you're looking at the photographs and going, oh, something's not right here. That, that's great because that means it's working, right? If you sit there and go, I'm taking a picture of this and it just feels like that, then you're not pushing yourself, right? It's like much like exercise. You know, if you, if you run and you're just you're not pushing yourself, you're not growing. And that's the same with photography. As you challenge these preconceptions, it is going to get hard and, and it's going to be tricksy. You're going to go, oh, is this the right direction? Are we heading in the right path? And you get fearful of questioning the accepted norm, the rules and the guidelines that we sometimes get shoved down our throats, right? Those rules and the guidelines are just that. They are just guidelines, right? They are examples of one way of doing things. I would like you to throw out this, this idea that you have to always 100% slavishly follow the rules. Just be your own person for, for a while. Get off the interstate, right? Stop being with all the other, all the other photographers, all those cars across the coast to get to wherever they're going as quickly as possible, right? Meander down the side roads, get lost in the unmarked B roads of middle of nowhere and see where these experiments take you. Don't be afraid to overexpose something or to underexpose something or to jump around and take pictures or, you know, to use lenses that you shouldn't be using. Experiment. Just jump in, see what happens. This is, this is the beauty of photography is that you are free to do your thing, right? It should be fun. Express yourself uniquely. Don't be like everybody else. Don't try and express your photography through using other people's words, okay? That's stupid, right? It's like Shakespeare copying word for word somebody else's sonnets and ending up expecting that there's going to be a different meaning at the end of it. It's, it's not the case, right? You need to take the tools and the words and the language that you have within you to put them together in a way that's unique for you, right? And, and that way, your photography is going to start having this visual communication. It is going to communicate a feeling. That's the word. It's not going to communicate a specific message that says, I like Marmite, right? And I do like Marmite, right? But it's going to convey a message that says, this is how I feel. And I'd like you to experience how I feel. Throughout all of this, I want you to remember one thing. When you look at photographs and everything that you see within those photographs, the way that people photograph a horse and things like that, these are not things that they've brought out of their pocket and set up for them to use exclusively. They have used elements within designing their photograph that are available to everyone. They're available to you, right? There is nothing that is off limits for you. You can use as freely as you want all the things that are surrounding us in the world. All you need is a willingness to, to see them, to recognize them, to go, that looks interesting. What possibilities can I explore in those things in front of me, in that subject? If you're interested in learning about more, about how to see the world in your own unique way, then click on this video, I'll lean out of the way, boom, boom, boom, boom, click on it up there. And that will take you to a fantastic episode, which I think you're absolutely going to love. And I hope you have enjoyed this one too. So thank you ever so much for watching and I'll see you again soon.