I always feel like I’m in a hall with one of the top Photography professors when you do these more theoretical/ history based videos. It takes me outside of the UA-cam photography/ videography bubble (which I do love as well) but so heavily based on landscape/travel/ big adventures rather than developing ones eye/creativity even in the most mundane situations.
The Art of Photography, YES!!! I love this type of content! Thank you for making such a great video. This type of content inspires me to get excited about photography all over again.
Hey Ted, feel free to ignore that little voice that says 'this video is getting too long' and just have at it. Some of my favorite UA-cam videos are the ones that are 30min+ which allows me to fully immerse myself in any given topic. Indulge us!!
This was a great video, Ted. I started watching your iTunes videos years ago and was enthralled with your knowledge and ability to communicate about photography and its greatest exponents. This was a refreshing return to those days about the true art of photography, the heart of photography. More of these and fewer equipment reviews would be gratefully appreciated. It's not the camera, it's the photographer that makes the image.
Terrific video, Ted. I'm sure many would appreciate more of these sorts of pieces. BTW, I love your story about the B&W photograph that drew you in! :-)
How to read a photograph - I think we need to learn this skill spending more time observing and paying attention to the environment in order to make better compositions.
The education and intention here...best quality stuff...wish I was so learned in photography and the intention of it. But I'm not giving up. Love the content.
I agree with you Ted about the Mona Lisa. This painting was much overlooked before the mid-19th century and it’s theft by a Louvre employee in 1911 made it famous exposing it to the entire world. As for her smile, many of Da Vinci’s woman have very similar ones. Adding to that is the fact that Da Vinci has painted four Mona Lisas, each exposed in different museums around the world. But as we know, there is only one with a great past history that many acclaim, i.e. the one in the Louvre. I’m a fan of museums and I wasn’t surprised of the result. My guess was 5 to 7 seconds - which is a shame. As for your subject this week, it’s one of my favorite one. “How to Read a Photograph”. Definitely composition and aesthetics play a vital role and I can’t help remembering Henri-Cartier Bresson’s method to judge if a composition works or not when he inverse an image - to identify if dark and light masses do their work by bringing the viewer inside the image. It’s a worthwhile method. I think one can learn composition faster when working with Still Life. You have the ability to interact with each object to create a worthwhile composition. You learn what is distracting, and you understand the value of space and geometry. Thanks for a great video Ted!
My Grandad was not a photographer and was not classically an artist, but the way you do things really reminds me of him. Thanks for your videos, I really appreciate being able to feel closer to my dead grandfather!
I really didn't get the photo at first but Joe Louis' fist makes all the difference. Stravinsky's arm is so key to that Newman picture. He turned Stravinsky into a shape. Jackson Pollock is a genius but you have to experience his art in person. I didn't get Pollock until I actually saw one up close.
Great episode. Before the pandemic, I would carve out time to go to the library to leaf through photo books. Everything you mentioned I would get out of those sessions. Thank you for bringing that exercise back to me.
Thank you for this. Reviews of lenses, cameras and phones are fine, but it's your videos like this one, that keeps me coming back. Composition is the difference maker in my book. You can master every other aspect of photography, but if your composition is (in lack of a better word) weak, the image probably won't capture interest - unless you caught something or someone sensational with your camera.
The Arnold Newman photograph is interesting for a number of reasons - it was shot on large format and there is a contact sheet which shows the whole set of images. It also shows the pre crop of this image, but the crop works so well with lines, triangles and rule of thirds. I would truly love a print of that image.
The Henri Cartier-Bresson photograph at 7:23 was taken on an overnight train in Romania. I used to ride one of those trains about once a year, visiting family across the country.
The experience that you put in your videos - I'm talking about experience with photography - and the informations that you can give to your audience is always... amazing. Thanks for your videos, Ted!
As most people I enjoy a good photograph. I recently saw an interview with Rachael Talibart. She is a very smart woman who used to teach law at the university level. Because of her love for photography she made it her new career. I bought, what I guess, is her latest book called “Tides and Tempests”. A photograph is a slice of time and I find hers amazing. She lives near the ocean thus her interests. Rachael doesn’t shoot time exposures she shoots violent storms. Thanks for another great Art of Photography!
I understood in a revelatory way that a photograph can be a work of art when I first saw Eugene Smith's 'Walk to Paradise Garden' - that was 53 years ago, I was 14 years old and I haven't stopped photographing since.
Hi Ted, Jose from Puerto Rico. You and Hugh Brownstone are my favorite Photography scholars. There is another young woman who has a UA-cam channel, and she goes by the name T, Hopper who dives deep into the history of Photography. Her views on the subject are wonderful. Having said that, I never get tired of watching your content man! Getting better in the art of Photography is always a great goal; but you articulate it in a way that makes the journey to that goal enjoyable.
Hi, Ted! Thanks so much for another great ideas & content video! I feel (I could be wrong) like you've drifted to a higher percentage of gear reviews in recent times. I appreciate the sad reality that gear reviews generate more views & revenue than idea videos, but I'd still like, as much as is realistic, to encourage you to keep your focus on the art & idea videos that you do so well. I'm familiar with the "3 second" viewing thing. I'd heard it was 4 seconds, but there's little difference. While your point about looking more and deeper is important, I think the 3-second thing, while technically true, is a misleading and useless stat. That makes it sound like people go to an art museum to look at nothing and then just eat in the café and buy a book or scarf in the gift shop and go home. Out here in Los Angeles, an institution like the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has thousands of works on exhibition every day. To look at every single piece for just 60 seconds each would take longer than the museum is open in a day! In fact, it would take more minutes than the museum is open in a week! Necessarily, one does have to walk quickly past many works. Spending even less than 3 seconds at most works. I would hope visitors would, and I know in my own museum viewing, that for the many works that I spend 1 second with, there are a handful that I spend one or many minutes with. At the Ball Court at Chichen Itza, I spent literally hours trying to absorb as much detail and ambiance from that massive "installation work" as I could. My friends were going crazy, dropping by every 15 minutes or so trying to drag me away, but it was so important to me to experience the textures and sensibility of that work as deeply as possible. Your point, that we should choose work to look at more deeply, is entirely appropriate. But I think that perhaps you and art museums in general should drop the "3 seconds" statistic. It may be technically true, but I find it entirely misleading. With apologies, I want to belabor the gear review point a but further. Photography on UA-cam is overwhelmingly dominated by gear reviews and I think this imbalance is deeply destructive to the very photography we all strive to create. Gear reviews aren't bad in themselves, but they must outnumber creativity, content & ideas videos by 100 to 1. This overwhelming imbalance skews our perception. Many of us have a bit of Gollum-like obsession with shiny things and when channel after channel bombard us with message after message to consume more commodities as a path to great photography, we're all too happy to oblige. The problem isn't that gear reviews exist, and the problem isn't that reviewers are biased. I think most reviewers are very honest about the pros and cons of everything they review. They probably give more and better information than a salesperson at a camera shop. The problem is disproportionality. When I wake up one morning to find 20 videos on Sony joining Canon and Nikon in releasing a $2,000 50mm f1.2 lens, I start to wonder if I "need" one. I start to think that $2,000 for a "nifty fifty", the historically least expensive lens one could find, is somehow a perfectly reasonable expense. All the photographers you've talked about on your channel remind me that ideas and vision are always more important than cameras and lenses. Unless you're going to make your own cameras and grind your own lenses, we all do have to buy something. But in a perfect world, it would be 90% videos like this one, and only 10% relentless gear reviews. Not the 1% content and 99% gear that we find on UA-cam today. The husband half of a popular husband-and-wife UA-cam photography channel has commented that ideas and creativity are more important than gear and that the reason they make so many gear videos is because the UA-cam analytics show that we the audience watch those much more than the idea and creativity videos. Chicken and egg. Which came first? Relentless gear videos? Or a gear-obsessed photography community? It probably doesn't matter. There's plenty of Gollum to go around. Sometimes, toward the end of a 20-minute review of the latest mirrorless wonder, a reviewer will toss in as an aside, "really, any camera made in the last 5 years is great." I think the many amazing photographers you've featured on this channel are a reminder that really, any camera made in the last 100 years is great! An old camera with a compelling idea is always stronger than the latest mirrorless autofocus wonder and "what should I take pictures of?" One YT channel I love is DSLRguide. Simon Cade is a young guy with a mature perspective. His channel consistently emphasizes content over gear. In fact, he's made a couple of videos arguing persuasively for not buying new gear. He's argued that new toys might be fun for a few weeks and might give you a 10% better image on screen, but that using that money instead to hire professional actors instead of trying to turn your friends into actors, or to travel to great locations instead of trying to shoot every scene within a short distance from home, will put far more on the screen for a given budget. I spent 2017 and 2018 doing a lot of street photography. I loved it. I spent 2019 doing photojournalism. PJ is more work than Street. But for me, far more rewarding. After experiencing the power of photojournalism, I found it hard to even go back to Street. Street was somehow no longer enough. I yearned to tell deeper stories, even though it's more work. I began in February and March 2020 to try to start on some longer-form Social Documentary projects. In mid-March 2020 a pandemic curtain drew those barely started projects to an abrupt close. I have photojournalist friends who dashed into the field to cover COVID, then the murder of George Floyd, and later the American Presidential elections. A couple of them have created incredibly powerful images of these events. Even so, I made the personal decision to observe pandemic isolation. The vaccines are offering hope, but I nonetheless expect 2021 to be much like 2020. I'm anticipating the chance to dive in again on longer projects in 2022. In my wildest dreams I don't expect to achieve even a fraction of what the many great photographers you've featured on The Art of Photography achieved. Still, I do think I can use photography to share important stories worth telling. Yes, I will use a mirrorless autofocus wonder to do it. While I will achieve less than people like Edward Curtis or Lewis Hine, my fingers are crossed that I will be able to live out my life with more financial security than life afforded them. Thanks for everything, Ted.
Average time of listening to a music song before skipped for the next is said to be eight seconds as far as it concerns teens and adolescents. Boring intro and you're out. That's why almost all successful songs start with some vocal part now, to pretend to have someone singing this song who actually can sing. Sad
Excellent talk. About exploring your yard, last year I did just that, saw a ladybug in a tree and litteraly ended up spending 2 days photographing ladybugs and wasps in the leaves.
What moves me? Reality and honesty in photos, W. Eugene Smith, Salgado. The Afghan girl image is the one that got me interested in photography, have several copies of that issue.
Great video - and especially the idea of "exploring your front yard" - I've been doing exactly that - and not Macro, but making videos of the nature around the house. There's so much going on, if only you sit still for a while, and observe the animal life. I've decided to create meditation videos, doing ultra slow (not timelapse) macro of plants - but in a way, that it feels like a discovery ride. I had to build my own camera rig, to accomplish this, and in the process, learnt a thing or two about microcontrollers, stepper motors, and image stabilization - to name a few ... a really fun discovery journey, and so rewarding...
Great video again Ted. This past year has made me a bit of a recluse, and if I wasn’t a key worker and have interaction with people I would probably have gone mad! I’m lucky enough to have some great countryside on my doorstep, so I go out on my bicycle and take photos on my iPhone. I also live in an old market town with interesting buildings, and love to go out with my ’proper’ camera and capture their timeless charm. I always feel inspired after watching your videos.
So glad your on youtube, someone that understands and knows image...visual communication 👍 i studied design and visual communication... The great painters etc... Print, etc.. It is a specialist subject i feel just flippantly thrown a side. When they want an electrician, mecanical engineers its, a different attitude. I studied design at Blackpool college, a degree at Cleveland college and assistant to photographers in London... I've had a good career. All the best Tony
Thank you! Great perspective and insight. In the Fashion world, "fast fashion." It has ruined and confused designers, as well as maimed the beautful esthetic of fashion, not sustainable. The pendulum is changing/swung to minimalism. Just as in photography is at a juncture of accelerated transformation. The platform of social media, specifically Instagram (you mentioned many times). Collectively, as creatives it can be confusing and frustrating. Do I want to be the flavor of the month? Or hone my craft? Is the "work" becoming further generic or unique? Time will tell🙏
The technical stuff is there by the reams but video like this had me so engrossed and watching real impressive narration till the end, as you said it's curfew in my part of the world due to Covid. My backyard teaches me a lot of things in photography: Macro, Landscapes, Birds, Butterflies, portrait of family, etc all from the comfort of your home and instant gratification: your system and you can edit all the files in a jiffy or need to change the lens or battery just run down...:))
I would love if you wouldn't oversimplify things. Screw the attention span. We might lose some viewers but why not dive deeper (like 2-3 hours) about analyzing photographs?
I went to an exhibit of Ansel Adams original prints a couple years back, and while I was looking at "Mount Williamson", a group of people came in, walked the entire length of the hall and back; 12-16 prints in total, and left, and I was still looking at "Mount Williamson." There is no other experience like "pixel peeping" a 16x20 Ansel Adams print.
Hi, Ted. I know this is an old thread; I don;t know if you still see new comments from it. Speaking of composition, I'd like to offer for your consideration Rodney Smith's book on Israel, Land of Light, an early work, B&W, made with a Leica and a 50mm lens, for reasons he gives in the Epilogue. This is an underappreciated work of considerable power that gives an insight into a man who was a deeper thinker, as one interview made at his home by another photographer makes clear (I can''t relocate it now), than some of his later work might suggest.
I guess I’m nuts… when I lived in London I would regularly go to the National Gallery and study every inch of Leonardo’s “Virgin on the Rocks” for around 30 minutes or so at lunch break… I would do this regularly because you only live once
Please less gear, more photographic content like this, and don't worry about video length, I'll watch 90 minute, even 120 minute videos if the subject is what I seek.
I love this kind of photography video. Thanks for sharing your experience and knowledge! BTW, could you please tone down the bright hallway/door in the background? My eye is drawn there, away from your face, and I feel like it is distracting from what you are telling us.
Dear Ted, thank You for the help in these years and lately. Many of your advices helped me. Actually I started To take care of the way I want To photograph, observing, following the process; thank You, Ted, for your help, Ariana
WOW, WOW, WOW - what insight on deconstructing what makes a photo 'great' / 'iconic' - more please!! I am most curious about the forth point - what I call the emotional element. A photo can convey happiness, sadness, joy, anger, freedom, power, etc. - I find that if a photograph doesn't convey some emotion, and will vary from person to person, then the rest is reportage - can you comment on this please?
Inform, educate, entertain? Tick, tick, tick. Don't worry about keeping these videos short- there's plenty of dross out there for those guys and some of us want and are capable of handling thoughtful, reasoned and fully developed concepts.
Still miss the cosy, dark moody vibe of your old studio. This new office is just begging for some furniture/decoration with the echo echo echo echo... Also, more of these vids pls, even at the expense of geartalk :)
Here is the print. Does it work, does it matter, is this a print of import. Why, 4 things to consider. Not a single point on the technical aspects of the image! No mention of how it was done. For me provenance is over valued. Would the Mona Lisa be important if it was painted by Giovanni da Sienna? Never heard of him... Thanks for your insights, I'll share with others.
Really interesting and stunning fact that people watch art just 3 seconds long! Didn't expect that.. Is there any static paper I can read more about this? Really interested and couldn't find any by my self. Thank you :D
The point is to shoot something you care about. Visualisation beforehand, and you want to to nail down your research. This will aid your creative imagination towards your subject / project. I say project in the sense of having a long term commitment to capturing something which has meaning to oneself and therefore others (a few perhaps). On the other hand just create single images of what you love, or what will get you the dopamine hits of likes. For me. building a cohesive body of work is more important, for others it may be single, powerful images. Go create humans and good luck, whatever you choose.
It's an interesting thing to be aware of...not only the amount of time people spend looking at a work of art, but WHY they are looking at it; what they are trying to accomplish in that span of time. A long look doesn't necessarily mean an enriching look. Then again, not everyone is looking to be enriched. Of course, you'd need to define enrichment or find out what it constitutes for a given individual. A short look isn't necessarily a shallow look. Questions of "what does the artwork resonate with inside the individual?" arise. When that resonance occurs, what does the viewer do with it, how do they choose to respond to it? The questions go very deep because human beings are complex, but simple at the same time. I would argue that the degree to which we try to avoid the simplicity , or to which the simplicity is circumvented, is the degree to which we are complex.
enjoyed this! glad you're still dropping art-centric content on this channel. maybe you've seen it, but I really like this video about reading and thinking about pieces of art: ua-cam.com/video/_HGW1DQO1xQ/v-deo.html
Great video as always! I just love the way your set up is...did you intentionally leave the door in the back open? It just has a nice flow to it. It would be cool if you took a b&w photo of you in that chair just looking into the computer monitor...maybe wearing glasses? Just a thought:)
I consider myself as a documentarian photographer. By that I mean I photograph my friends, relatives, and people I do not know. All is done on the fly. No studio work. I have found that really good photographs elicit an emotional reaction from the viewer, even if they do not know this person. That is when I know I have a good photo. They may laugh, or feel sad but there is an emotional content to their viewing. I have though about photographing homeless people. Not so much as to exploit them but to show the gritty side of living. Plus, to learn about each person and how and why they are where they are. Yet, I feel that might be too intrusive?? I don't know. I do know there is a powerful story to be told by these people (in black and white, btw). What are your thoughts on this?? (anyone).
the 3 seconds viewing time is because it is in a museum and people want to see all, or at least a big chunk of it, of what that museum has to offer, so they allow themselves only a few seconds to look at something. It is the self imposed allotted time per artwork. If the same flat art hangs in a small gallery with, let's say, only 25 pieces, the allotted time will increase and if you give somebody an actual print that they can hold in their hands, the time will be much much longer if the art is interested enough (which is subjective). The same for an image in a book or on line even. Having said that, once my work hangs in the MOMA, I don't mind if somebody looks for only 3 seconds....
I actually guessed 3 seconds! I'm guilty of this myself. Unless I really like the art, then I'll look at it for a little longer. 4 seconds. Just kidding.
I guessed 30 seconds, and thought that was way too short. 3 seconds is just a glance and then you move on. I don't get it. You've got rid of some of your money to get in, why not spend some time? :) Last time I was in London, I spent at least three-four hours inside the Tate Modern, and stil I felt like I didn't get to see it all.
Thinking of me in a museum I said 2 seconds. My wife said 10 minutes. I was thinking of the photos / art pieces that don't grab me whilst she must have been thinking of the ones that do!
we spoke before about possible collaboration on a music project well i am currently putting together an album of covers and tonight i recorded lullaby by the cure, ive done the bass the drums and the string parts, would you like to put down the gtr parts? just a thought as you keep reminding me you used to be a musician lol Learn to pronounce
Hi there. I do now street photography. Just hard to read and find a story of the pitures what I take most of the time. Is not easy rally. I try so hard to get a way to do this really. I look lot of street photographers like Viven Maier or Bill Brandt. I even dont know what picture inspire me, is it a bad thing?
Loved this video. I didn’t think it was too long at all. I really love when you dive into the art of photography it’s one of the main reason I always look forward to your videos. We are standing on the shoulders of giants and most of us aren’t even aware of it. Keep enlighten us please and stay safe
far out I thought about it, usually I will look at any for a minute or so and more on ones I like and and guessed 10 seconds and it's one second, does that make me an art critic?
Sadly, I think too many people have been told it's intellectual or hip or some other brownie star to see art in museums so they go, but haven't the first idea. Or like the Mona Lisa, they've been told it's a "great painting" and it should be appreciated, but if they were honest, they'd be neutral about it. (I see much more in Lady with an Ermine than Mona and love Bouguereau's people much more than either.) I'm actually a big devotee of "vintage" (I shudder using that word because these are from back when I was a kid. *sigh*) black/white snapshots by amateurs. That was LIFE. Those were moments in someone's story. And today, the VJ Day Kiss photo would be woke-cancelled like White Christmas and Dr. Seuss. They really don't get it.
I just found your account 2 days ago and I'd like to thank you for your very hard work and amazing content. I've been taking pictures for a little more than 3 decades, started with a Pentax P30N. My dad, grandfather, uncle were all in photography, all from prestigious school in Paris, but somehow, I never learned from them. with digital photography, my passion for this art became an obsession, so far that I've now been traveling exclusively for it, 6-7 months per year, one country after the other (mainly in Asia for the last 6 years) and am now based in Thailand, where I'm sorting and editing 158'000 pictures of my archives. Cartier Bresson, Avedon, Kertész, Georges Eastman or painter like Toulouse Lautrec, have always inspired me, and finding your channel rejuvenate the desire to get deeper into it, get back to the ART and away to the destroying influence of social medias, especially considering the collapse of Instagram and Co. again, thx a lot for lighting the flame again :-)
So cool! A life-size photo of Joe Louis' fist! I'm disappointed, I missed the time-spending-looking-at-artwork-in-a-museum question by a full second. I guessed two seconds; I've spent a lot of times in museums.
Independent confirmation of your "time to look at artwork" - about a decade ago I wanted to find that for myself. I blindly click-timed myself on my first visit to Brooklyn Museum in NYC. Overall average was 7s. However, there were two sets of data, each with low dispersion. One with average of... 3s (!)... that I spent on most artworks. Second averaged about a minute but on a very small subset of works. So, 3s indeed (or 7, still we are hunting).
More of these please! Or even deeper dives into individual photos
Absolutely. A deep dive into individual photos would so cool to hear!
Ted did a bunch of those in the early days of AoP! So good.
Yes please
I always feel like I’m in a hall with one of the top Photography professors when you do these more theoretical/ history based videos. It takes me outside of the UA-cam photography/ videography bubble (which I do love as well) but so heavily based on landscape/travel/ big adventures rather than developing ones eye/creativity even in the most mundane situations.
I really enjoy these types of videos!!! Theory, history and inspiration to practice.
The Art of Photography, YES!!! I love this type of content! Thank you for making such a great video. This type of content inspires me to get excited about photography all over again.
Hey Ted, feel free to ignore that little voice that says 'this video is getting too long' and just have at it. Some of my favorite UA-cam videos are the ones that are 30min+ which allows me to fully immerse myself in any given topic. Indulge us!!
This was a great video, Ted. I started watching your iTunes videos years ago and was enthralled with your knowledge and ability to communicate about photography and its greatest exponents. This was a refreshing return to those days about the true art of photography, the heart of photography. More of these and fewer equipment reviews would be gratefully appreciated. It's not the camera, it's the photographer that makes the image.
Terrific video, Ted. I'm sure many would appreciate more of these sorts of pieces.
BTW, I love your story about the B&W photograph that drew you in! :-)
How to read a photograph - I think we need to learn this skill spending more time observing and paying attention to the environment in order to make better compositions.
The education and intention here...best quality stuff...wish I was so learned in photography and the intention of it. But I'm not giving up. Love the content.
I missed these kind of videos! More of them, please 🤗
This is great Ted. More of this (and less of the gear reviews) please. I really miss your educational videos.
Great, great, great! Love these deeper videos :D
Indeeeeeeeed
May I recommend “Understanding a Photograph” by John Berger? It gives you an other view on photos.
Ted, thanks for your teachings. I found this video very interesting.
I agree with you Ted about the Mona Lisa. This painting was much overlooked before the mid-19th century and it’s theft by a Louvre employee in 1911 made it famous exposing it to the entire world. As for her smile, many of Da Vinci’s woman have very similar ones. Adding to that is the fact that Da Vinci has painted four Mona Lisas, each exposed in different museums around the world. But as we know, there is only one with a great past history that many acclaim, i.e. the one in the Louvre.
I’m a fan of museums and I wasn’t surprised of the result. My guess was 5 to 7 seconds - which is a shame.
As for your subject this week, it’s one of my favorite one. “How to Read a Photograph”. Definitely composition and aesthetics play a vital role and I can’t help remembering Henri-Cartier Bresson’s method to judge if a composition works or not when he inverse an image - to identify if dark and light masses do their work by bringing the viewer inside the image. It’s a worthwhile method.
I think one can learn composition faster when working with Still Life. You have the ability to interact with each object to create a worthwhile composition. You learn what is distracting, and you understand the value of space and geometry.
Thanks for a great video Ted!
My Grandad was not a photographer and was not classically an artist, but the way you do things really reminds me of him. Thanks for your videos, I really appreciate being able to feel closer to my dead grandfather!
I really didn't get the photo at first but Joe Louis' fist makes all the difference. Stravinsky's arm is so key to that Newman picture. He turned Stravinsky into a shape. Jackson Pollock is a genius but you have to experience his art in person. I didn't get Pollock until I actually saw one up close.
Thank you for introducing me to Graciela Iturbide!
Pollock has the most perplexing composition of them all....And the most Beautiful !
guys, try to watch this at 0.5 speed. best experience ever!
Great episode. Before the pandemic, I would carve out time to go to the library to leaf through photo books. Everything you mentioned I would get out of those sessions. Thank you for bringing that exercise back to me.
Love this. Looked for that book, The Decisive Moment”, $570 on Amazon 😳
Thank you for this.
Reviews of lenses, cameras and phones are fine, but it's your videos like this one, that keeps me coming back.
Composition is the difference maker in my book. You can master every other aspect of photography, but if your composition is (in lack of a better word) weak, the image probably won't capture interest - unless you caught something or someone sensational with your camera.
The Arnold Newman photograph is interesting for a number of reasons - it was shot on large format and there is a contact sheet which shows the whole set of images.
It also shows the pre crop of this image, but the crop works so well with lines, triangles and rule of thirds. I would truly love a print of that image.
The Henri Cartier-Bresson photograph at 7:23 was taken on an overnight train in Romania. I used to ride one of those trains about once a year, visiting family across the country.
The experience that you put in your videos - I'm talking about experience with photography - and the informations that you can give to your audience is always... amazing. Thanks for your videos, Ted!
As most people I enjoy a good photograph. I recently saw an interview with Rachael Talibart. She is a very smart woman who used to teach law at the university level. Because of her love for photography she made it her new career. I bought, what I guess, is her latest book called “Tides and Tempests”. A photograph is a slice of time and I find hers amazing. She lives near the ocean thus her interests. Rachael doesn’t shoot time exposures she shoots violent storms. Thanks for another great Art of Photography!
I understood in a revelatory way that a photograph can be a work of art when I first saw Eugene Smith's 'Walk to Paradise Garden' - that was 53 years ago, I was 14 years old and I haven't stopped photographing since.
Hi Ted, Jose from Puerto Rico. You and Hugh Brownstone are my favorite Photography scholars. There is another young woman who has a UA-cam channel, and she goes by the name T, Hopper who dives deep into the history of Photography. Her views on the subject are wonderful. Having said that, I never get tired of watching your content man! Getting better in the art of Photography is always a great goal; but you articulate it in a way that makes the journey to that goal enjoyable.
thanks for the other references to the photographers im very grateful
Thanks for producing this Ted.
Hi, Ted! Thanks so much for another great ideas & content video! I feel (I could be wrong) like you've drifted to a higher percentage of gear reviews in recent times. I appreciate the sad reality that gear reviews generate more views & revenue than idea videos, but I'd still like, as much as is realistic, to encourage you to keep your focus on the art & idea videos that you do so well.
I'm familiar with the "3 second" viewing thing. I'd heard it was 4 seconds, but there's little difference. While your point about looking more and deeper is important, I think the 3-second thing, while technically true, is a misleading and useless stat. That makes it sound like people go to an art museum to look at nothing and then just eat in the café and buy a book or scarf in the gift shop and go home.
Out here in Los Angeles, an institution like the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has thousands of works on exhibition every day. To look at every single piece for just 60 seconds each would take longer than the museum is open in a day! In fact, it would take more minutes than the museum is open in a week! Necessarily, one does have to walk quickly past many works. Spending even less than 3 seconds at most works. I would hope visitors would, and I know in my own museum viewing, that for the many works that I spend 1 second with, there are a handful that I spend one or many minutes with. At the Ball Court at Chichen Itza, I spent literally hours trying to absorb as much detail and ambiance from that massive "installation work" as I could. My friends were going crazy, dropping by every 15 minutes or so trying to drag me away, but it was so important to me to experience the textures and sensibility of that work as deeply as possible. Your point, that we should choose work to look at more deeply, is entirely appropriate. But I think that perhaps you and art museums in general should drop the "3 seconds" statistic. It may be technically true, but I find it entirely misleading.
With apologies, I want to belabor the gear review point a but further. Photography on UA-cam is overwhelmingly dominated by gear reviews and I think this imbalance is deeply destructive to the very photography we all strive to create. Gear reviews aren't bad in themselves, but they must outnumber creativity, content & ideas videos by 100 to 1. This overwhelming imbalance skews our perception.
Many of us have a bit of Gollum-like obsession with shiny things and when channel after channel bombard us with message after message to consume more commodities as a path to great photography, we're all too happy to oblige.
The problem isn't that gear reviews exist, and the problem isn't that reviewers are biased. I think most reviewers are very honest about the pros and cons of everything they review. They probably give more and better information than a salesperson at a camera shop. The problem is disproportionality. When I wake up one morning to find 20 videos on Sony joining Canon and Nikon in releasing a $2,000 50mm f1.2 lens, I start to wonder if I "need" one. I start to think that $2,000 for a "nifty fifty", the historically least expensive lens one could find, is somehow a perfectly reasonable expense.
All the photographers you've talked about on your channel remind me that ideas and vision are always more important than cameras and lenses. Unless you're going to make your own cameras and grind your own lenses, we all do have to buy something. But in a perfect world, it would be 90% videos like this one, and only 10% relentless gear reviews. Not the 1% content and 99% gear that we find on UA-cam today.
The husband half of a popular husband-and-wife UA-cam photography channel has commented that ideas and creativity are more important than gear and that the reason they make so many gear videos is because the UA-cam analytics show that we the audience watch those much more than the idea and creativity videos. Chicken and egg. Which came first? Relentless gear videos? Or a gear-obsessed photography community? It probably doesn't matter. There's plenty of Gollum to go around.
Sometimes, toward the end of a 20-minute review of the latest mirrorless wonder, a reviewer will toss in as an aside, "really, any camera made in the last 5 years is great." I think the many amazing photographers you've featured on this channel are a reminder that really, any camera made in the last 100 years is great! An old camera with a compelling idea is always stronger than the latest mirrorless autofocus wonder and "what should I take pictures of?"
One YT channel I love is DSLRguide. Simon Cade is a young guy with a mature perspective. His channel consistently emphasizes content over gear. In fact, he's made a couple of videos arguing persuasively for not buying new gear. He's argued that new toys might be fun for a few weeks and might give you a 10% better image on screen, but that using that money instead to hire professional actors instead of trying to turn your friends into actors, or to travel to great locations instead of trying to shoot every scene within a short distance from home, will put far more on the screen for a given budget.
I spent 2017 and 2018 doing a lot of street photography. I loved it. I spent 2019 doing photojournalism. PJ is more work than Street. But for me, far more rewarding. After experiencing the power of photojournalism, I found it hard to even go back to Street. Street was somehow no longer enough. I yearned to tell deeper stories, even though it's more work. I began in February and March 2020 to try to start on some longer-form Social Documentary projects. In mid-March 2020 a pandemic curtain drew those barely started projects to an abrupt close.
I have photojournalist friends who dashed into the field to cover COVID, then the murder of George Floyd, and later the American Presidential elections. A couple of them have created incredibly powerful images of these events. Even so, I made the personal decision to observe pandemic isolation. The vaccines are offering hope, but I nonetheless expect 2021 to be much like 2020. I'm anticipating the chance to dive in again on longer projects in 2022.
In my wildest dreams I don't expect to achieve even a fraction of what the many great photographers you've featured on The Art of Photography achieved. Still, I do think I can use photography to share important stories worth telling. Yes, I will use a mirrorless autofocus wonder to do it. While I will achieve less than people like Edward Curtis or Lewis Hine, my fingers are crossed that I will be able to live out my life with more financial security than life afforded them.
Thanks for everything, Ted.
Average time of listening to a music song before skipped for the next is said to be eight seconds as far as it concerns teens and adolescents. Boring intro and you're out. That's why almost all successful songs start with some vocal part now, to pretend to have someone singing this song who actually can sing. Sad
Excellent talk. About exploring your yard, last year I did just that, saw a ladybug in a tree and litteraly ended up spending 2 days photographing ladybugs and wasps in the leaves.
What moves me? Reality and honesty in photos, W. Eugene Smith, Salgado. The Afghan girl image is the one that got me interested in photography, have several copies of that issue.
Great video - and especially the idea of "exploring your front yard" - I've been doing exactly that - and not Macro, but making videos of the nature around the house. There's so much going on, if only you sit still for a while, and observe the animal life. I've decided to create meditation videos, doing ultra slow (not timelapse) macro of plants - but in a way, that it feels like a discovery ride. I had to build my own camera rig, to accomplish this, and in the process, learnt a thing or two about microcontrollers, stepper motors, and image stabilization - to name a few ... a really fun discovery journey, and so rewarding...
Love your channel. BUT ... Fine Art Photographers ARE "Professional Photographers." Be well and Peace Out.
Great video again Ted. This past year has made me a bit of a recluse, and if I wasn’t a key worker and have interaction with people I would probably have gone mad!
I’m lucky enough to have some great countryside on my doorstep, so I go out on my bicycle and take photos on my iPhone. I also live in an old market town with interesting buildings, and love to go out with my ’proper’ camera and capture their timeless charm.
I always feel inspired after watching your videos.
So glad your on youtube, someone that understands and knows image...visual communication 👍 i studied design and visual communication... The great painters etc... Print, etc.. It is a specialist subject i feel just flippantly thrown a side. When they want an electrician, mecanical engineers its, a different attitude. I studied design at Blackpool college, a degree at Cleveland college and assistant to photographers in London... I've had a good career. All the best Tony
Thank you! Great perspective and insight. In the Fashion world, "fast fashion." It has ruined and confused designers, as well as maimed the beautful esthetic of fashion, not sustainable. The pendulum is changing/swung to minimalism. Just as in photography is at a juncture of accelerated transformation. The platform of social media, specifically Instagram (you mentioned many times). Collectively, as creatives it can be confusing and frustrating. Do I want to be the flavor of the month? Or hone my craft? Is the "work" becoming further generic or unique? Time will tell🙏
The technical stuff is there by the reams but video like this had me so engrossed and watching real impressive narration till the end, as you said it's curfew in my part of the world due to Covid. My backyard teaches me a lot of things in photography: Macro, Landscapes, Birds, Butterflies, portrait of family, etc all from the comfort of your home and instant gratification: your system and you can edit all the files in a jiffy or need to change the lens or battery just run down...:))
I would love if you wouldn't oversimplify things. Screw the attention span. We might lose some viewers but why not dive deeper (like 2-3 hours) about analyzing photographs?
I went to an exhibit of Ansel Adams original prints a couple years back, and while I was looking at "Mount Williamson", a group of people came in, walked the entire length of the hall and back; 12-16 prints in total, and left, and I was still looking at "Mount Williamson." There is no other experience like "pixel peeping" a 16x20 Ansel Adams print.
Wonderful Ted, thank you 🙏
Hi, Ted. I know this is an old thread; I don;t know if you still see new comments from it. Speaking of composition, I'd like to offer for your consideration Rodney Smith's book on Israel, Land of Light, an early work, B&W, made with a Leica and a 50mm lens, for reasons he gives in the Epilogue. This is an underappreciated work of considerable power that gives an insight into a man who was a deeper thinker, as one interview made at his home by another photographer makes clear (I can''t relocate it now), than some of his later work might suggest.
I guess I’m nuts… when I lived in London I would regularly go to the National Gallery and study every inch of Leonardo’s “Virgin on the Rocks” for around 30 minutes or so at lunch break… I would do this regularly because you only live once
Please less gear, more photographic content like this, and don't worry about video length, I'll watch 90 minute, even 120 minute videos if the subject is what I seek.
I love this kind of photography video. Thanks for sharing your experience and knowledge! BTW, could you please tone down the bright hallway/door in the background? My eye is drawn there, away from your face, and I feel like it is distracting from what you are telling us.
Dear Ted, thank You for the help in these years and lately. Many of your advices helped me. Actually I started To take care of the way I want To photograph, observing, following the process; thank You, Ted, for your help, Ariana
WOW, WOW, WOW - what insight on deconstructing what makes a photo 'great' / 'iconic' - more please!! I am most curious about the forth point - what I call the emotional element. A photo can convey happiness, sadness, joy, anger, freedom, power, etc. - I find that if a photograph doesn't convey some emotion, and will vary from person to person, then the rest is reportage - can you comment on this please?
Inform, educate, entertain? Tick, tick, tick. Don't worry about keeping these videos short- there's plenty of dross out there for those guys and some of us want and are capable of handling thoughtful, reasoned and fully developed concepts.
Still miss the cosy, dark moody vibe of your old studio. This new office is just begging for some furniture/decoration with the echo echo echo echo... Also, more of these vids pls, even at the expense of geartalk :)
Here is the print. Does it work, does it matter, is this a print of import. Why, 4 things to consider.
Not a single point on the technical aspects of the image!
No mention of how it was done.
For me provenance is over valued. Would the Mona Lisa be important if it was painted by Giovanni da Sienna? Never heard of him...
Thanks for your insights, I'll share with others.
Really interesting and stunning fact that people watch art just 3 seconds long! Didn't expect that.. Is there any static paper I can read more about this? Really interested and couldn't find any by my self. Thank you :D
The point is to shoot something you care about. Visualisation beforehand, and you want to to nail down your research. This will aid your creative imagination towards your subject / project. I say project in the sense of having a long term commitment to capturing something which has meaning to oneself and therefore others (a few perhaps). On the other hand just create single images of what you love, or what will get you the dopamine hits of likes. For me. building a cohesive body of work is more important, for others it may be single, powerful images. Go create humans and good luck, whatever you choose.
Thanks for the video Ted, got an exam tomorrow, studying semiotics, and this video has somewhat been helpful ❤
Great video...but a have afollow up question....where do you get your shirts? I love them, classy as hell and look really comfy!
It's an interesting thing to be aware of...not only the amount of time people spend looking at a work of art, but WHY they are looking at it; what they are trying to accomplish in that span of time. A long look doesn't necessarily mean an enriching look. Then again, not everyone is looking to be enriched. Of course, you'd need to define enrichment or find out what it constitutes for a given individual. A short look isn't necessarily a shallow look. Questions of "what does the artwork resonate with inside the individual?" arise. When that resonance occurs, what does the viewer do with it, how do they choose to respond to it? The questions go very deep because human beings are complex, but simple at the same time. I would argue that the degree to which we try to avoid the simplicity , or to which the simplicity is circumvented, is the degree to which we are complex.
enjoyed this! glad you're still dropping art-centric content on this channel. maybe you've seen it, but I really like this video about reading and thinking about pieces of art: ua-cam.com/video/_HGW1DQO1xQ/v-deo.html
Great video as always! I just love the way your set up is...did you intentionally leave the door in the back open? It just has a nice flow to it. It would be cool if you took a b&w photo of you in that chair just looking into the computer monitor...maybe wearing glasses? Just a thought:)
I loved the pace of this. I was captured through and through. Adding my like midway through
I consider myself as a documentarian photographer. By that I mean I photograph my friends, relatives, and people I do not know. All is done on the fly. No studio work. I have found that really good photographs elicit an emotional reaction from the viewer, even if they do not know this person. That is when I know I have a good photo. They may laugh, or feel sad but there is an emotional content to their viewing. I have though about photographing homeless people. Not so much as to exploit them but to show the gritty side of living. Plus, to learn about each person and how and why they are where they are. Yet, I feel that might be too intrusive?? I don't know. I do know there is a powerful story to be told by these people (in black and white, btw). What are your thoughts on this?? (anyone).
the 3 seconds viewing time is because it is in a museum and people want to see all, or at least a big chunk of it, of what that museum has to offer, so they allow themselves only a few seconds to look at something. It is the self imposed allotted time per artwork. If the same flat art hangs in a small gallery with, let's say, only 25 pieces, the allotted time will increase and if you give somebody an actual print that they can hold in their hands, the time will be much much longer if the art is interested enough (which is subjective). The same for an image in a book or on line even. Having said that, once my work hangs in the MOMA, I don't mind if somebody looks for only 3 seconds....
Hah my thought of Joe public was 3 seconds. Some people speed tour to get out and then say - Done that.
Is this amazing soundtrack composed by the legendary Luchi De Jesus?
I actually guessed 3 seconds! I'm guilty of this myself. Unless I really like the art, then I'll look at it for a little longer. 4 seconds. Just kidding.
I guessed 30 seconds, and thought that was way too short. 3 seconds is just a glance and then you move on. I don't get it. You've got rid of some of your money to get in, why not spend some time? :) Last time I was in London, I spent at least three-four hours inside the Tate Modern, and stil I felt like I didn't get to see it all.
Whenever I sing ... As a vocalist and a guitarist my aim is to deliver an emotion and everything follows up ...if you know what I mean !
Thinking of me in a museum I said 2 seconds. My wife said 10 minutes.
I was thinking of the photos / art pieces that don't grab me whilst she must have been thinking of the ones that do!
Appreciate this type of video, I think a longer format works for this subject matter.
Incredible! Can you get back to more of this types of topics @theartofphotography?
we spoke before about possible collaboration on a music project well i am currently putting together an album of covers and tonight i recorded lullaby by the cure, ive done the bass the drums and the string parts, would you like to put down the gtr parts? just a thought as you keep reminding me you used to be a musician lol
Learn to pronounce
I reality liked this video! Your conclusion about force ourselves to creativity it find me 100% agree
Hi there. I do now street photography. Just hard to read and find a story of the pitures what I take most of the time. Is not easy rally. I try so hard to get a way to do this really. I look lot of street photographers like Viven Maier or Bill Brandt. I even dont know what picture inspire me, is it a bad thing?
Loved this
You have a deep voice, but I guess digression happens a lot. Perhaps make pointers and stick to it. Will help us!
Loved this video. I didn’t think it was too long at all. I really love when you dive into the art of photography it’s one of the main reason I always look forward to your videos. We are standing on the shoulders of giants and most of us aren’t even aware of it. Keep enlighten us please and stay safe
fantastic stuff, take all the time you want to dive into this stuff, maybe the youtube culture will learn to slow down and get into some complex ideas
I never knew I liked photography until I started watching you
Here's a question for debate: what's the most iconic photograph of all time?
This is an interesting video.
I'd love it if you were to do a series about the subject.
Excellent clip Ted. Inspirational indeed.
Very nice video! Thank you!
far out I thought about it, usually I will look at any for a minute or so and more on ones I like and and guessed 10 seconds and it's one second, does that make me an art critic?
Happy to see you're still doing videos. :) Be safe
It is easy to take a photograph, but it is harder to make a masterpiece in photography than in any other art medium - Ansel Adams
How come, Nader? Kindly explain.
This is a really insightful video! Thanks for making this video.
So people pay money to essentially scroll through an art gallery like it's Instagram?
Sadly, I think too many people have been told it's intellectual or hip or some other brownie star to see art in museums so they go, but haven't the first idea. Or like the Mona Lisa, they've been told it's a "great painting" and it should be appreciated, but if they were honest, they'd be neutral about it. (I see much more in Lady with an Ermine than Mona and love Bouguereau's people much more than either.) I'm actually a big devotee of "vintage" (I shudder using that word because these are from back when I was a kid. *sigh*) black/white snapshots by amateurs. That was LIFE. Those were moments in someone's story.
And today, the VJ Day Kiss photo would be woke-cancelled like White Christmas and Dr. Seuss. They really don't get it.
PS I subbed based on this art chat. "Please, sir, I want some more." :)
I just found your account 2 days ago and I'd like to thank you for your very hard work and amazing content. I've been taking pictures for a little more than 3 decades, started with a Pentax P30N. My dad, grandfather, uncle were all in photography, all from prestigious school in Paris, but somehow, I never learned from them. with digital photography, my passion for this art became an obsession, so far that I've now been traveling exclusively for it, 6-7 months per year, one country after the other (mainly in Asia for the last 6 years) and am now based in Thailand, where I'm sorting and editing 158'000 pictures of my archives. Cartier Bresson, Avedon, Kertész, Georges Eastman or painter like Toulouse Lautrec, have always inspired me, and finding your channel rejuvenate the desire to get deeper into it, get back to the ART and away to the destroying influence of social medias, especially considering the collapse of Instagram and Co. again, thx a lot for lighting the flame again :-)
That is pretty fucking amazing but I wish it was Marciano
Me encantaban esos videos de "one photo deep dive"; creo que por ahí se podría ir más a fondo en este tema: ¿cómo leer una foto?
Saludos
So cool! A life-size photo of Joe Louis' fist! I'm disappointed, I missed the time-spending-looking-at-artwork-in-a-museum question by a full second. I guessed two seconds; I've spent a lot of times in museums.
Placing people on the left side of the viewer is most noticeable???
I was guessing 5 sec. now i'm going to watch the rest of the video.
Actually the sailor was just leaving to his ship when he heard the war was over.
Where is the 1970s New York City of today?
0:33 Ok....this gave me anxiety, was foreseeing you poking yourself. Now I'll keep watching...
Ooh, the Art of Photography is back! Yay!!!!!!
Independent confirmation of your "time to look at artwork" - about a decade ago I wanted to find that for myself. I blindly click-timed myself on my first visit to Brooklyn Museum in NYC. Overall average was 7s. However, there were two sets of data, each with low dispersion. One with average of... 3s (!)... that I spent on most artworks. Second averaged about a minute but on a very small subset of works. So, 3s indeed (or 7, still we are hunting).
I did notice all in your video the lighting setting is amazing
Brilliant and informative. Please take a breath. xo