 Do you ever feel like your photographs are just a drop in the ocean of the 95 million photographs that are uploaded every single day and that's just to Instagram? That those photographs are getting lost in this flood of images? Well, we're going to change all that. With a little help from Seth Godden and a purple cow, we're going to make people sit up and take notice of your photograph. How's it? Photographs, I feel are something we should make first and foremost for ourselves and I'm a big believer in that. However, I do appreciate that there are times when you do want people to notice your work, that you do want them to stand out amongst the crowd. You could be like in a competition, you could be looking for new clients. There's a whole variety, but how when you're confronted with this unrelenting barrage of imagery, can you make these photographs be something that people take notice of? To help us with this, we're going to turn to Seth Godden. He's a very famous marketer in America and he recounts the story of one summer he's driving through France with his family and they come across this field of cows that are completely unlike anything they have ever seen in America. They are besotted with them. That was amazing and then in the field next to them, there's another field of cows and so on and it goes on for a couple of miles and he says after a few miles, they stopped remarking on those cows because those cows which at the beginning had been something new, exciting, something that they wanted to talk about had become commonplace. He said, well what happens if there was now a field of purple cows? That would be immediately something to talk about that would be remarkable and this is the word we need to focus on today. Remarkability in your photography. Now, remarkability is very different to, well, different. Being remarkable means stepping away from things that you do normally. It's about evolving but pushing your boundaries. Now in photography, this might mean experimenting with a new style or technique that's completely different to what you do before because you want people to talk about it, remark upon it. It's important to remember that remarkability is not what's remarkable to you, the photographer, but to others. A way of thinking about this would be like spot colouring. Spot colouring is to me not remarkable one iota, but to other people, certainly people outside of photography who may be your target audience, that is extremely remarkable. So think about your audience. What would make them stop, admire your work, speak directly to them? What can you capture that they would want to share, to talk about? I want to share with you right now the work of Ralph Eugene Meteor. I love his work. It appeals to my sense of disquiet and the kind of the eeriness thing and because it is so different, because it's so remarkable and I'm sorry if I keep using the word different, that's how easy it is to fall into that trap. I want to share it with you. Now that work of Ralph Eugene Meteor brings us neatly on to another concept that you might fall foul of, that being noticed is not the same as being remarkable. I'm reminded of a story in America a number of years ago where there was a woman photographer on Facebook who was trying to get into the family photo market and she's dressed up all her kids in scenes from The Walking Dead where there was some unpleasantness going on and that was outrageous. It got a lot of discussion going on but did it hold any value? Did it give her meaningful engagement or was the focus of outrage just turned on her for a little while before it moved on to something else? You can't just be shock value, you need to make something that is going to not just catch attention but hold it. Now in this case it means possibly going beyond the norm, you know, what can you photograph that is different? It doesn't mean to have to be extreme, it doesn't have to be something that, you know, a rare event or something like that, but just going beyond what your target audience would expect to see. Seth Godin talks about remarkability lies in the edges of things. Now in photography think an easy way of exploring remarkability lies in the edges of technique. There is a Japanese photographer called Hiroshi Sugimoto and he has experimented with ultra long exposures not of the things we would normally see, landscapes, cityscapes, things of that nature with those clouds but of candles burning over an hour or two down to the to the wick of cinema screens with a whole film exposed in one frame. That's about pushing those limits that's about experimenting looking out on the fringes. Now we've got a better idea of remarkability, it's time to actually put this into practice in our photographs and I mentioned earlier about this audience, I think that is the most important aspect that you need to get into your head is that you cannot take images that please everyone. When you try to please everyone you end up not pleasing anybody at all. Focus on creating photographs that resonate with an extremely specific audience. That way at least you are able to communicate, get a language going on with them that you are going to have something more intense. People when they see it are going to go that photograph it feels like it was made just for me. If you are taking photographs to please me then shoot them full of graphic elements, you know angles and shapes, concrete, you know that very modernist kind of sort of feel and then throw in some Ralph Rucci me yard. This is about how you think in your head clearly about who it is that you want to speak to. You also have to absolutely avoid the ordinary. If it has been done a thousand times then it is not remarkable. You only have to spend a couple you know minutes on on Instagram to see especially in portrait and landscape what things that look the same they're just the same. How are you going to stand out in this? Now you could say that nothing is original, everything has been done but I often see and as I imagine photographers who have been around for some time you see trends that disappeared 30 years ago resurface cross processing things like that that people go wow that's amazing. Do you remember we talked about not remarkable to the photographer but remarkable to the viewer. You should also be quite happy to take risks. It's only like in competition and you know the camera clubs and whenever you're online or you're looking to have people remark on your work it feels like you want you want to play it a little bit safe but I don't think anybody's ever walked around a gallery or seen a picture that's kind of you know whatever right because being playing safe. Come and come and look at this decidedly safe photograph. No we pull people out we go look at these photographs by Joyce Tennyson. Wow they're different they you know they again there's that word different we should I'm trying very hard to keep it out of my vocabulary. They are playing on that edge of a technical aspect they're showing me a world something they communicate again with me because I like that airy sort of weird sort of you know sort of mystic feeling that they have. I'm sure all of us have seen at some point you know photography that stood out it was like really it was wow it was doing its thing and and it was at the top of everybody wanted to to look at it and it was remarkable and then the photographer just kept on doing the same thing the same thing the same thing. I do like Martin Parr's work and certainly at some point he was no doubt remarkable but his work has just stayed the same it hasn't really progressed you want to I think you know continuously innovate reinvent your work this might mean you know adopting to to a new technology or exploring different genres there was a photographer I talked on talked with on the channel recently who ditched all of his gear and photographs exclusively on an iPhone and that's his way of you know kind of reinventing his approach and I found his work extremely remarkable so much so that I am I sat down with an hour and a half and I talked to him sharing his images and I'll link to the talk at the end of this video and now it's time to put all of this into practice first of all you want to challenge your comfort zone think about the best way to evolve as a photographer and by pushing your own boundaries try a new genre of photography experiment with different types of lighting attempt compositions that you know you don't usually work at think about telling a story every photograph that resonates with with somebody tells that person some type of story the most memorable photographs for me are the ones that have within them a a compelling story not that is like a straight black and white narrative but a story that I have invented about that photograph about what it means to me as the viewer when you compose your photographs in a way that touches some emotional trigger points or you know sparks off an idea within the viewer then you're halfway closer to getting those images that are going to keep the person's attention don't think this is all about just you know once again photographing the extraordinary the word extraordinary can be used when you photograph average everyday things in extraordinary ways of pushing out boundaries of you know being at those edges of considering how people expect that thing to be photographed remarkability and photography you can take many forms and one of the forms I talked about that I love earlier was this guy called Eric Mencher over here please go and check out his work it is fantastic thank you ever so much for watching and I'll see you again soon