 How do you improve your photography without spending money on equipment? Discovering untapped resources within yourself will improve your image making far more than a new lens or a camera will. How's it? Sometimes you hit a barrier in your creative journey. The photographs you are taking, they feel disappointing. It feels like something is missing and of course the answer to this is to spend more money on lenses. Did they help you in the past? Did it make you more creative? What if there is a better way to overcome these creative hurdles which doesn't involve you spending thousands of dollars on gear? When you apply what you are going to learn today to your photography not only will you be creating unique photographs unlike anybody else's but you won't have spent a single dime on improving your photos. From the moment that you opened your eyes as a baby and your parents started pointing things out to you you have been building up in your mind ideas about how you are supposed to see the world. Certain shapes represent specific things and those specific things should be interpreted in a very certain way. You draw a shape that looks like a tree, ergo it is a tree and that tree is supposed to go up from the ground to the sky. So what has happened to you is that you have carried all of this way of interpreting the world into your photography and how you point your camera at the world around you. When you first picked up a camera you took photographs with the expectation that they should be literal representations of the things that you see in front of you. Now this approach to finding things to photograph and how to photograph them is only going to get you so far. When I was a youngster and I first picked up a camera I asked the age-old question what should I photograph? Now we've all asked the same question it's only natural but starting today right now I want you to start challenging every idea that you have about the world that you see around you and how you photograph that world. Michael Kenner doesn't just photograph the world as it exists but he sees the potential within the world for it to be photographed in a certain way in a way that elevates those images into something that people who could be standing right next to him when he takes the photographs they would never see. I want you to be able to do the same thing to be able to stand in a crowd of other photographers and to see the images that they cannot so that when you show them the photographs that you take and that they were standing right next to you they will look at you and go wow how did you do that? How did you see that image? The first step to doing this is to think about the way that you look at the world think about the places that you grew up in did you live in the countryside did you grew up in the suburbs or perhaps you were an urban kid all of these things shape the way that you think about objects about how you think about the world imagine that you grew up on the wide plains of the american midwest how would that change the way that you feel about skyscrapers so start right at the beginning think about how you can challenge or at least question what you think are the norms the next time you find yourself thinking this is how i am supposed to photograph this thing because that's the way it's always been done stop stop yourself and just say no no no no no no i am going to photograph it in a completely different way this time harry callahan spent so much of his career doing just that trying out new things experimenting even if it is something as as silly as just having a long shutter speed jumping up and down on the spot give it a try open yourself to the idea of experimentation just to see what happens it's natural for us to go and look at photography on instagram facebook you read it wherever and try and find inspiration and it's also natural for us to want to try and have positive recognition of our photography it is nice to have our ego stroked from time to time there's no denying it copying the work of other photographers and taking as inspiration is an extremely useful exercise but i want to caution you against simply copying without understanding the point of copying somebody else's work is to try and figure out the processes that a creative person went through to arrive at that final piece of art so then rather than slavishly copying almost without understanding somebody else's photography on instagram simply because it gets lots of likes i would like you to be a magpie take a piece from this photographer take a bit from that photographer it's almost like you're creating a list of your favorite ingredients that you can blend together to create your own unique photographs when you look at the work of great photographers by past and present you can almost see the echoes of the people who went before them who helped that photographer shape their own photographs dan winters is one such photographer i created a video about him which i would highly recommend that you have a look at i'll link to it at the end of the video and also in the description box below with dan's images i see the likes of urban pen walker evans has worked with tools and a host of other influences as well what influences do you find in your own work let me know in the comments below the easiest way to kind of be this magpie is to create a Pinterest board so that when you see images that you enjoy for any reason whatsoever save them there and you know you can then later on revisit them and see what elements within them you can start to include in your own photographs i talked about you know the idea of instagram replaces and this is this is great but it also shows up something that afflicts us in the modern world because we can see how many people like these photographs we need to start making images for ourselves that you know that please us first and foremost because the quickest way to become disillusioned in your photography is to make images specifically to please other people a few years ago i wanted to start a youtube channel about photography and i could have done what a lot of photography channels do and which is focused exclusively on gear it gets a lot of views the affiliate possibilities are handsome but it wasn't something that i really wanted to talk about i wasn't interested and i'm still not really interested in talking about lenses and cameras what i am interested though is talking about photography with with you while we think about why we take photographs what photography means to us and how we can become more in tune with the essence of taking photographs and this has come across in the modest success of this channel it's because i am talking from my heart about something that i'm interested in that you are connecting with this and everybody else who watches these videos it resonates with them so in your own photographs i want you to try and just remember take things for yourself because they please you first and foremost don't photograph specific genres just because it seems like everybody else is is doing it just try out new things try and photograph things because they interest you sadly man is a photographer who photographs things from this point of view just because they interest her you know aside from her own family she also turned her lens to civil war battlefields experimental ranches where they do work on the putrefaction of bodies if something doesn't interest you don't feel that you have to photograph it just because everybody else does photograph what you find interesting the joy of photography for me really is is seeing things that other people can't now people don't always like what i show them and what i see and you know but that's fine because these photographs are for me they you know they make me happy and it gives me pleasure to be able to sit somewhere like an airport terminal in dc twiddling my thumbs waiting for a connection and to be able to wander around with my phone just taking interesting photographs while other people have their heads buried in a screen the reason i started this challenge to try and share some of that pleasure in photography with with you with the likes of you guys and and to help you see the world and the wonder that is there that so many other people miss if you haven't already subscribed to the channel please consider hitting the subscribe notification bell that way you'll be notified of all the new content i share but also with it will help youtube recommend these videos which are so helpful to other people who may enjoy this content gear and equipment will not make you a better photographer a new lens may enable you to realize the photograph that you have in your mind but it is unlikely to spark your creative thoughts simply by being attached to your camera one of the great benefits that i had from being a poor photography student was that i didn't have loads of fancy lenses this was the days before zooms were prevalent so i had two prime than 80 sorry a 28mm and a 50mm and because i only had these two focal lengths i had to work within their constraints to be as creative as i could so i would like you to try this for yourself put a prime lens on your camera or if you only have a zoom lens you know just pop on stick to one focal length and go somewhere that you have been many times before and and where you look at things without giving him too much of a second glance because it's all just normal mundane or whatever you want to call it but this time look around you challenge the way that you think about the things that you see those things that you see i've seen every single day take five objects that catch a ride doesn't matter what they are and try and photograph them in ways that challenge the word should i want you to try and banish this word from your photography that if you look at something and think this is how i should photograph it then do the complete opposite photograph a landscape like a portrait a portrait like a landscape just be be anti rules man just just go for it being curious about the world is one of the best tools that you can have as a photographer and it's not going to cost you anything you don't have to spend money to find interest in the things that are all around you and i guarantee that if you find a place local to you that you are familiar with it has been photographed by somebody with a modicum have been of ability that you are going to be surprised about what they are able to see but you haven't yet this is what you are going to unlock within yourself this this ability to see things with your own your own unique vision now if you're finding it difficult i get it right but remember you don't have to beat yourself up don't be hard on yourself these exercises that you have here to work from are just that they are exercises to help you train your eye to start to seeing photographs not everybody has it you know towards the end of his life david goblet photographed in south africa around the very areas that i grew up in the very same streets that i drove every single day without giving a second thought to the things all around me i distinctly remember sitting in a traffic jam one evening as the sun went down over the michaelsberg mountains in the distance thinking about how i wish i was over there taking photographs rather than being stuck in this traffic and then imagine how i felt when i saw a photograph that david goblet had taken in almost the exact same place but rather than thinking about oh the thing that's over there like the looks guy will give you know my mind on anything but the present he had taken a photograph of what was there in the present try and find photographers who have photographed things that you are familiar with and see what they are seeing that you aren't look beyond the obvious dan winters is one of my favorite all-time photographers his work is inspirational it's rich it's beautiful and it is just well it is just simply wonderful to look at i know that you would also love his photography and that's why i've linked to a video up here that i did about his photographs in more depth i've also popped it in the description box below thank you ever so much for being here today and to spending time with me