📸 James Brouwer shares with Pop Sonality his 10 Tips for Aspiring Photographers.

 📸 James Brouwer 🇨🇦 shares with Pop Sonality his 10 Tips for Aspiring Photographers:

My 10 “Rules” For Those Considering Art Photography. 

I have been asked by Popsonality to devise a list of rules for photographers along the line of Martin Parr’s recent list for WePresent. Well, I’m no Martin Parr, and he’s pretty much said it all anyhow. At most I can suggest what has worked for me (an outdoor, digital photographer of scapes & things, not people). And I’m not providing “rules” per se; they’re somewhere between musings and Eno-esque “strategies”. Take ‘em or leave ‘em:

1. Look / learn / love visual art. As per Mr. Parr’s initial rule, it really pays to appreciate what other photographers have done, find what works for you, and then see what happens when you bring that influence to your own work. I would only add that it helps to look beyond canonical photography to painting, collage, sculpture, film, vernacular photography, etc. All of vision can influence your eye, and is your eye that determines where you point your lens.

2. Be open-minded about what you don’t like. Ask yourself why it falls short, perhaps consider what others have said about the artist -- maybe you will come to see their work differently, maybe you will eventually gain a new influence and discard older ones. It’s all part of continually developing as a photographer.

3. Don’t get hung up on you are “saying” in your work; follow your visual intuition. The significance of what you are doing will follow in due course. 

4. Experiment. Adjust the size of an image, its shape, its cropping, its context (in diptychs or triptychs etc). See if you like Photoshop. You may come to prefer a more unadulterated approach – and that approach certainly has its virtues -- but experimenting with visual options will expand your creativity.

5. Practice. You have to stick with photography before it lifts off.

6. Don’t think that acquiring better photographic equipment will necessarily make you a better photographer. Certainly the quality of a camera is important, and a more expensive camera can make a difference (depending on your aims) but it will only take you so far as an artist. 

7. Keep a camera with you when you go out and take lots of pictures. If you find something in the field that visually turns you on, shoot all around it, from close, from far, from high, from low, etc. You don’t always know in advance which of the many images will turn out to be the strongest, so cover your bases.

8. It’s great to explore new areas with a camera, but don’t overlook the value of returning to the good spots you already know. Shoot a really good location more than once, perhaps under different light, under different weather, in a different season, at night, etc. Revisit your older photos as well, reconsider and/or revise them as per Rule #4. 

9. Be thick-skinned when it comes to criticism. You don’t have to agree with others in all instances, but be open-minded enough to concede when the remark rings true. On the flip side, don’t make photographs primarily to impress others. Recognition is not a bad thing, but ‘likes’ are not the engine of good art. 

10. You should enjoy photography; if it doesn’t light your fire in the long run, move on to what does.