 How's it? Welcome back to the channel. It's fantastic to have you here. Today we're going to be improving your photography by looking at the work of Richard Avedon. It is not hard being great occasionally. It is difficult to be good consistently. Richard Avedon's photography, both his portrait work and his fashion images, have so many lessons that we can pull out to put into place in our own images to make us strive towards that goal of being good consistently. The first lesson that I think is so important is that, you know, Avedon says that you start with the style and that you are in chains. But if you start with an idea, then you are free. And the whole thing with this is that like a lot of, you know, advice in photography, it's at first seems contradictory. How can a man who's almost defined by a certain style tell you that the style is not important? But think about this, right? How many times have you had an idea for a photograph that you go, well, I want I'm going to do this. This is a really good idea for a photo. But then you think about it in terms of what you feel is your style for however you want to define that. And the idea doesn't quite ever work out. And that's because maybe your style isn't right for the idea. Avedon had an idea. He wanted to explore the connection between himself as the photographer and the subject or the sitter of whom he was photographing. He was interested in people and people alone. So how does he express this? So can he do this by using, you know, very fancy lighting or, but, you know, lots of, you know, props and things of that nature? Or can he employ a list of notes? Can he say, no, I don't want exquisite light? No, I don't want apparent composition, right? No, I don't want a seduction to use his own words of poses or narrative. He just wants the person that he's interested in and the thing that happened between them, that dance. So that's how the style that he was working in was appropriate for the idea. So what are the ideas that you have? And how are you going to best implement them in a way that isn't restricted by a playbook of style? A rule set that you have put in place upon yourself? Even though photography is a still image, within that, there's always movement. The best images I always feel that have a sense of movement to them, that there's something going on, even if it's subtle. And like Kati Prasad and his decisive moment, and like a great number of other photographers, Avidan understood that movement in photography or events in photography are very rapid things. And that you need to anticipate and take the photograph just, just, just before it reaches its peak. Because if you start off and it's like, oh, take a picture here, then the photograph hasn't happened yet. And if you take it too late, then the moment has passed. You need to be just at that top, that moment when the roller coaster just stops and it goes like that. That's when all of that comes together. Avidan changed the landscape of fashion photography because he understood that. He took that staid, formal approach to fashion photography and dug into his head and went, okay, well, Mum and Dad are involved in the clothing industry. And I know that clothes are meant to be worn. They're meant to have a life and a soul of themselves. So what are we going to do? Let's get them, let's get the models to move, to be free, to be themselves and to use that expression, to use that timing, anticipation. Bring this into your own photography. It doesn't matter what genre that you work in, you know, street photography, learn the ebb and the flow of the people in front of you. Portrait photography. There are tiny, imperceptible signs that something is about to cross that person's face and give you a photograph that transcends just being a simple portrait. Like a great deal of things in your life, it works best when you are listening to them, when you are paying attention, you're not being loud and boisterous. It was just you and the scene in front of you. It is important within your photography, I think to have a personality, to have your personality in the images. You know, Avidan talked a lot about how so many of his portraits, actually more portraits of him than the person who is photographing. This is illustrated by the fact that when you look at a book of his work that's not about fashion or specific portraits, then you see interesting photographs. You say, well, hang on a second, why are there all these photographs of his father getting older and eventually his corpse? Why are there photographs of mental assignments, of patients with mental problems? Then you realise when you read things, this is why it's so important to listen to interviews, to read quotes and biographies about photographers because it gives you an insight down to how they think about their photography, how they think about the process of creating images. You go, okay, well, Avidan made a point, he said, look, I photograph things that I am afraid of because he said that it gave him a sense of control over something that was obviously inherently out of his control. And by taking the photograph, by getting the print out there, it's like he was kind of exercising a ghost or something and putting it somewhere safe. If it's in the photograph, then it's not out here anymore. So think about how you can inject your own personality into your photographs. This is not about presets and all that sort of stuff. This is about you. How do you feel about the things that you are photographing? Do they make you happy? Do they make you sad? Are you melancholic when you think about things like that? Do they scare you? You know, it is okay to go and take pictures of things that scare you because that might open up a way of connecting with things that you possibly will never have experienced before. I'm reminded of a story that I heard a number of years ago about somebody went off to America to do a course in documentary photography and one of the students was sent to be an embedded reporter, if you want to call it that, in an animal shelter and had spent a week there looking at the life cycle of the animals that came in, which obviously ended up in the tragic end that a lot of these animals do. And I wouldn't go into that, but that photographer was forced to confront how they felt about that and think about how that sort of experience can change your photography for the better. So think about photographing how you feel about things by allowing your feelings to come through a photograph. Don't worry about what other people think. This is not about that. This is not about somebody's going to go ah and look at you, whatever. This is about getting some of your personality into the photographs. In the modern day, there's this big movement towards being continuously hustling, to always be, you know, grinding things out, to be always doing the thing that should go, because if you're not hustling, then you're not doing it. And I think that's kind of detrimental to a lot of people, especially, you know, photographers who are doing it just for the love of it, that you feel that you're always supposed to be taking photographs. Now, Averton did say that, you know, if he had a day where he didn't do anything photographically, then he would feel that he'd lost something else. So you can see where people go, you know, where they get this idea from. And I think in a more realistic sense, because not all of us have time to take photographs every single day, that you can still think about photographs no matter where you are, no matter what you're doing, you can think about the things that surround you and how they would look, how would that thing look photographed, you know, learning to see the world photographically, because you're always, if you're always thinking about how things could look, then at least you're training your mind constantly to make better use of the time that you have when you are actually photographing, because you're not having to rewarm up your photographic eyes, because you're exercising them every single day. So take that lesson and just well, water it down a bit, I suppose is one way of looking at it. But take it like that and, you know, do something every day that helps you improve the way that you see the world as a photographer. I hope as you've been watching this video that, you know, you've been looking at Avidan's work and has a penny dropped about his photography itself, is there something in there that you may have gone, aha, actually, this is the thing? Because I certainly hope that it has done. The thing that stands out for me throughout all of this is that the lighting that he employs is, most often is very simple. There are very few tricksy camera techniques beyond maybe some slow shutter stuff. The technical aspects of his photography and a great number of photographers they're good, but they're not, they're not obvious, right? He hasn't spent loads of time working out very fidgety techniques and doing lots of jiggery-pokery. It's about the photograph itself rather than the technical way of getting there. Sometimes, you know, we can be seduced by the cool little things that we can do, you know, both in the camera and the software editing and all that kind of thing and, you know, they're fun. But we shouldn't forget that getting it right in camera is, you know, it's a very old saying, right? But it's at the basis of everything. The more that you can focus on that ethos of getting it right in camera, then I think the stronger your photography becomes. You're not fussing about what's in front of you. You're not fussing about what's in front of the camera. You are dedicated to creating the image from the elements that are moving in front of you that are interacting with you that are part of the image process. When you're fussing with that camera, you're not, you're disconnected. Be interested in the person and to be interested in you need to just stop worrying about that thing that is in between you. Learn the technical things but don't become obsessed with them. Great photography is great photography, not because of the camera or the lens of the technique but how the photographer chose to capture the thing that caught their attention. Take that lesson. Just live it because that is what makes your photographs stand out, makes what new photographs come alive. It makes your imagery different to everybody else's and when it's different to everybody else's then people notice it. I didn't notice Avidon's work initially when I was a student because I went oh my god look at the depth of feeling whatever. No, I noticed it because it was different from all the other loud brash things that I was seeing at the time. I was drawn to its simplicity in a world that was full of cross-processing and tricksy lighting setups. Within your own photographs, think about the thing that interests you. Think about the ideas that excite you, how you are going to express them so they make the idea come alive, that they enhance the idea. How are you going to confront and inject into these images your own personality? What are you going to do to get them to sing your song? What are you going to do today that's going to keep you working towards that path of being good consistently? A photographer who has answered all these questions is Sally Mann and I would highly suggest that you go and look at her photography right now because she is exceptional. Thank you ever so much for watching and I will see you again soon.