7 Things I’ve Learnt About Photography From Pablo Picasso

By: Anthony Epes

One of my favorite photographers, Ernst Haas, said we should seek inspiration from anywhere and everywhere. Listening to music, looking at paintings and sculptures, and reading books feeds your imagination more profoundly than just looking at the work of other photographers.
I think this is true. Exploring the work of a painter I love is as enriching to me as exploring a new city at sunrise. Similarly, wandering through a forest and photographing the sunlight filtering through the trees.
Our minds are hungry beasts. We think around 60-70,000 thoughts every day, with the majority of them being the same thoughts we had yesterday (and the day before). That’s scary. You can see how easy it would be to live life on autopilot.

We can choose to think the same thoughts as yesterday, or we can feed our minds with new ideas – be they visual, sensory, words or music.
One artist who has inspired me with his work and ideas is Pablo Picasso. When he spoke about the artistic process, he articulated many of my core beliefs about taking photos.
He reminded me of the most exciting and essential elements of living a creative life. In the busy-ness of life, I so often forget.
Today I’d like to share some of Picasso’s ideas that are incredibly inspiring and impactful on any photographic journey.

1. “Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” – Pablo Picasso

This quote of Picasso’s sums up why I dedicated my life to photography. Why I let it be almost everything that I am.
There is something about photography that deeply stirs my soul. I feel more alive while taking photos than I do with most other things.
Playing with my kids or talking to my teenage son deep into the night about challenges he faces, brings a similar feeling of purpose. However, very little else matches the feeling I get in the act of creation.

Photography is a life-affirming pursuit. It makes me feel I am not just skating on the surface of life – rushing to and fro, writing emails and filling in forms.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with either of those activities, but do they really make you feel alive?
We all have to live and do necessary mundane tasks. But, we can also commit to making a vast amount of space in our lives for things that create deeper satisfaction in ourselves.

2. “Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working.” – Pablo Picasso

This quote of Picasso’s is a testament to say: take photos even when you’re not in the mood, even when you’re only getting rubbish images. The only way to get that fantastic image is to keep going.
You never know when the light may dramatically change, making the scene before you look eerily beautiful. Alternatively, an intriguing stranger might walk past doing something peculiar!
Even though I am a professional photographer, I sometimes suffer from procrastination as much as the next person. I intend to go out shooting but get distracted by my kids or get too tired after a heavy meal.

I realize if I’m not out there, I’ll never know what experiences, and then what photos, I’m missing. That seems like an insane waste of life.
Keep going. Continue searching for that great scene, interesting person, or a beautiful landscape. Whatever it is that floats your boat, go and find it.

3. “Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.” Pablo Picasso

I look at thousands of photos on my workshops. One thing I see regularly is people making images too complicated. When your images are too complex, you are not defining your subject correctly.

There’s a myriad of compositional ideas you can use to help define your subject. For example, Rule of Thirds, creating clean backgrounds for your portraits and breaking the world down into elements.
The overarching concept in all of these ideas about composition is to eliminate all that is unnecessary.
Photography is a process of choosing what to put in the frame, and what to take away. It is wise to make your composition, then look and think. What isn’t working here? What do I need to remove?

For example – one common mistake many photographers make is not checking their corners. It’s amazing how often people spend so much time composing their subject, but not checking all around the frame, especially the corners, to see that everything within it should be there.
Therefore, creating images is not just – ‘what do I put in the frame?’ But also – ‘what do I take away?’

4. Creating Feeling Within Your Images

“There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who, with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.” – Pablo Picasso

The same is true for photographers. You can photograph any number of things, and it looks entirely real. However, what does it feel like when you look at your photograph?
It is all too easy to just document, without creating any sense of what it feels like to be in that hot and humid city, to look at that face, to feel the textures of the buildings you are capturing.
Photographing a cold winter’s morning is simple. Nevertheless, to translate the feeling of what it would feel like to stand in a misty field, with cold biting your face and a deep feeling of eeriness as fog rolls in across the land – that is another skill entirely.

Ultimately, the success of any photo is whether it creates an impact for your viewer. The only question you need to ask is, ‘does this image invoke a feeling?’
It’s not just what we see that creates an impact, but the feeling that is created within our bodies when we see something that we love, dislike, or invokes joy, or sadness.
Feelings are what we remember. Images have no sense of feeling are instantly forgettable.

5. “I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” – Pablo Picasso

One of the things that surprised me about being a parent is how quickly young children latch on to the idea, ‘I can’t do this now, so I’ll never be able to do it.’
Once you have allowed that thought into your mind, it can quickly mushroom until you are utterly convinced that you can’t do something. Never, ever.
I see it in my children, and I see it in 70-year-old clients who come to my workshops. I have to say that, ‘I can’t do this, so I’ll never be able to it,’ is one of the most destructive ideas for your photography.

Of course, the technophobe might never become the most skilled camera person alive. In contrast, they can overcome their self-perception and become competent and confident with their cameras. I see proof of this regularly.
One of the most exciting ideas I have noticed coming out of the science community in recent years is the idea of Neuroplasticity.
Instead of the old belief that our brains become ‘fixed’ and unchangeable as we enter into adulthood, we now understand that brains are completely changeable.

In fact, at any point in life, one is able to totally rewire thoughts and beliefs we hold about ourselves.

“The man who thinks he can and the man who thinks he can’t are both right.” – Confucius

Think of all the things you believe you can’t do with your photography, and go out and challenge those beliefs.
If you believe you can’t do street photography, but would secretly love to try it, do it!

If you think you’ll never master manual mode, read up on it. Go out as often as you can. Make a ton of mistakes. You’ll get it eventually.
If like me, you think, ‘I’m not a nature photographer, but I’d love to try it,’ go and spend time in nature. Experiment, play and try new things.
As long as you approach the world with the attitude of ‘I can,’ you probably will.

6. The World is Rich With Ideas

“A piece of space-dust falls on your head once every day… With every breath, we inhale a bit of the story of our universe, our planet’s past and future, the smells and stories of the world around us, even the seeds of life.” – Pablo Picasso

Of course, photography starts as a technical exercise. You need to use a machine, often with a little computer in it. Fully get to know the machine you are using. At least to the place where you are comfortable.
Photography is a union of the technical and the creative. The creative part of photography comes from an ethereal place within you that is unique.

Your creative vision flows from everything that has made you who you are – your experiences, your life, what you love and what you detest.
It also comes from the world around us; from the feeling of history we experience when we walk through old city streets; from the awe of looking at a majestic five hundred-year-old tree.
The world isn’t a flat surface. Everywhere we look we see the ‘moment;’ the weather; the time of day. We also know that in a few hours everything we are currently seeing can change.

Most people are so locked in their minds and focused on themselves that they don’t open themselves up to the mysteries of the world.
There are stories and ideas all around us that can inspire us in our photography, can provoke new ideas and adventures for us.
All we have to do is pay attention and commit to the awesome power of photography.

7. “Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.” – Pablo Picasso

The older I get, the more I feel like I need to demand of myself. That by the end of each day I want to be profoundly and truly satisfied. Not just to be content, or to have my to-do list full of check marks.
I want to have created something. Something that is entirely my own. A creation that no one else could have, because they are not me.
Photography gives us that, and I love that it does. It can give us opportunities to see, feel and experience more of the world.

Without photography, life would not be anywhere near as rich and meaningful as it is.
When faced with either sleep or the chance to catch an amazing sunrise – I get up to photograph the sunrise.
Our lives are speeding along and, although we are aware of this, we become complacent. In a subconscious part of ourselves, we truly believe we live forever. The possibility of not existing doesn’t seem right.

Our time on this planet is finite. If we acknowledge that we are organic beings, it can motivate us to demand more of what we truly want from our lives.
For me, it’s exploring and taking photos. It’s creating art and sharing it with others or showing people what beautiful things I see all around me.

Of course, your photography journey is different from mine.
You may record the breathtaking journey of your children from babies into adulthood or documenting the joyous color of flowers.
Alternatively, you may be climbing snowy mountains and showing the world the awe-inspiring landscapes you witness. You may be documenting the strange and humorous things we humans do when out in the world, inhabiting our little bubbles as we move around the streets, unaware of the world watching us.
There are so many ways to be a photographer. So many things to document, explore and see. Follow your own path.
Just be open, and inquisitive. Look around you and open your mind to everything you don’t usually notice.

By showing yourself and others what you see in this world, you open up other people’s perspective of the world around them. You take them out of their hectic bubble – full of the 24/7 news, the list of things to do, the emails and daily demands of daily life.
You give them a gift of seeing — a gift of taking a moment to stop and stare in awe at what the world has laid out before us.
It’s a pretty exciting, amazing and incredibly life-enhancing pursuit taking photos.

Have these ideas fed your creative soul? If they have helped you demand more from your photography, and to take more time out of your life to commit to this fantastic pursuit, let me know below. It’s always great to hear from you.

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Selling Fine Art Photography

It may be easy to take photographs but it may not be as easy to sell them, or so you might think. This eBook by Photoshelter will provide you with tips from photographers and industry professionals to hep you with selling your fine art work. From what to do and what not to do when selling your work, the guide covers everything.

I hope you're enjoying the free Ebooks.  I know that taking Photography Courses can be expensive, so I'm currently posting one free ebook per week. (Feel free to share these freebies with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, SnapChat, Instagram, Pinterest, & Reddit)  For those of you who'd rather learn faster, check out the website at the bottom of this page. Either way, thanks for stopping by, and enjoy.

10 Ways to Take Stunning Portraits

By: Darren Rowse

How do you take Portraits that have the ‘Wow’ factor?
Today and tomorrow I want to talk about taking Portraits that are a little out of the box. You see it’s all very well and good to have a portrait that follows all the rules – but it hit me as I was surfing on Flickr today that often the most striking portraits are those that break all the rules.
I want to look at some ways to break out of the mold and take striking portraits by breaking (or at least bending) the rules and adding a little randomness into your portrait photography. I’ll share ten of these tips today and a further ten tomorrow (update: you can see the 2nd part here).

1. Alter Your Perspective

Most portraits are taken with the camera at (or around) the eye level of the subject. While this is good common sense – completely changing the angle that you shoot from can give your portrait a real WOW factor.

Photo by striatic

Get up high and shoot down on your subject or get as close to the ground as you can and shoot up. Either way you’ll be seeing your subject from an angle that is bound to create interest.

Photo by TeeRish

2. Play with Eye Contact

It is amazing how much the direction of your subject’s eyes can impact an image. Most portraits have the subject looking down the lens – something that can create a real sense of connection between a subject and those viewing the image. But there are a couple of other things to try:
A. Looking off camera – have your subject focus their attention on something unseen and outside the field of view of your camera. This can create a feeling of candidness and also create a little intrigue and interest as the viewer of the shot wonders what they are looking at. This intrigue is particularly drawn about when the subject is showing some kind of emotion (ie ‘what’s making them laugh?’ or ‘what is making them look surprised?’). Just be aware that when you have a subject looking out of frame that you can also draw the eye of the viewer of the shot to the edge of the image also – taking them away from the point of interest in your shot – the subject.

Photo by monicutza80

B. Looking within the frame – alternatively you could have your subject looking at something (or someone) within the frame. A child looking at a ball, a woman looking at her new baby, a man looking hungrily at a big plate of pasta…. When you give your subject something to look at that is inside the frame you create a second point of interest and a relationship between it and your primary subject. It also helps create ‘story’ within the image.

Photo by paulbence

3. Break the Rules of Composition

There are a lot of ‘rules’ out there when it comes to composition and I’ve always had a love hate relationship with them. My theory is that while they are useful to know and employ that they are also useful to know so you can purposely break them – as this can lead to eye catching results.
The Rule of Thirds is one that can be effective to break – placing your subject either dead centre can sometimes create a powerful image – or even creative placement with your subject right on the edge of a shot can sometimes create interesting images.

Photo by reportergimmiâ„¢

Another ‘rule’ that we often talk about in portrait photography is to give your subject room to look into. This can work really well – but again, sometimes rules are made to be broken.

Photo by Bukutgirl

4. Experiment with Lighting

Another element of randomness that you can introduce to your portraits is the way that you light them. There are almost unlimited possibilities when it comes to using light in portraits.
Side-lighting can create mood, backlighting and silhouetting your subject to hide their features can be powerful.

Photo by Bukutgirl

Using techniques like slow synch flash can create an impressive wow factor.

Photo by diskomethod

5. Move Your Subject Out of their Comfort Zone

I was chatting with a photographer recently who told me about a corporate portrait shoot that he had done with a business man at his home. They’d taken a lot of head and shoulder shots, shots at his desk, shots in front of framed degrees and other ‘corporate’ type images. They had all turned out fairly standard – but there was nothing that really stood out from the crowd.
The photographer and the subject agreed that there were plenty of useable shots but they wanted to create something ‘special’ and out of the box. The photographer suggested they try some ‘jumping’ shots. The subject was a little hesitant at first but stepped out into the uncomfortable zone and dressed in his suit and tie started jumping!
The shots were amazing, surprising and quite funny. The shoot culminated with the subject jumping in his pool for one last image!
While this might all sound a little ‘silly’ the shots ended up being featured in a magazine spread about the subject. It was the series of out of the box images that convinced the magazine he was someone that they’d want to feature.

Image by TeeRish

6. Shoot Candidly

Sometimes posed shots can look somewhat…. posed. Some people don’t look good in a posed environment and so switching to a candid type approach can work.
Photograph your subject at work, with family or doing something that they love. This will put them more at ease and you can end up getting some special shots with them reacting naturally to the situation that they are in. You might even want to grab a longer zoom lens to take you out of their immediate zone and get really paparazzi with them.
I find that this can particularly work when photographing children.

Photo by phitar

7. Introduce a Prop

Add a prop of some kind into your shots and you create another point of interest that can enhance your shot.
Yes you might run the risk of taking too much focus away from your main subject but you could also really add a sense of story and place to the image that takes it in a new direction and gives the person you’re photographing an extra layer of depth that they wouldn’t have had without the prop.

Photo by Mrs. Maze

8. Focus Upon One Body Part – Get Close Up

Get a lens with a long focal length attached to your camera – or get right in close so that you can just photograph a part of your subject. Photographing a person’s hands, eyes, mouth or even just their lower body… can leave a lot to the imagination of the viewer of an image.
Sometimes it’s what is left out of an image that says more than what is included.

Photo by Bukutgirl

9. Obscure Part of your Subject

A variation on the idea of zooming in on one part of the body is to obscure parts of your portrait subject’s face or body. You can do this with clothing, objects, their hands or just by framing part of them out of the image.
Doing this means that you leave a little to the imagination of the image’s viewer but also focus their attention on parts of your subject that you want them to be focused upon.

Photo by BigBlonde

10. Take a Series of Shots

Switch your camera into ‘burst’ or ‘continuous shooting’ mode and fire off more than one shot at a time.
In doing this you create a series of images that could be presented together instead of just one static image.
This technique can work very well when you’re photographing children – or really any active subject that is changing their position or pose in quick succession.

Image by diyosa

10 More ways to Take Great Portraits – Continued Tomorrow

Update: You can read the 2nd half of this series at 10 More Tips for Stunning Portrait Photography. Also check out What the Mona Lisa Can Teach You About Taking Great Portraits for a portraits tutorial with a difference.

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HOW TO POSE People Who Are Not Models

5 Tips How to Set Up a Home Studio for Dramatic Portraits

A Post By: Lily Sawyer

Having a brick and mortar studio when you are a photographer is such a huge and daunting step. There are so many overhead costs to consider such as rent, electricity, insurance and various other bills. It’s a worry to cover all these before you pay staff and yourself and still make enough profit to make a living. This thought can make one feel that having a studio is an impossible dream or is too of a big a step to take. But you can always start somewhere, so let’s look at some tips for how to setup a home studio.

How to set up a home studio

If you have a spare room in your home or a basement, that is a good place to consider as a home studio. You may be surprised at just how much space is needed to start a portrait studio. Not that much at all! In this article, I will show you how I have set up my little home studio which I have recently revamped to make into a dedicated portrait studio.
I live in London in a narrow Victorian house. These houses have a typical 2-up 2-down rectangular layout, short side across and long side from front to back, with a narrow corridor that runs on one side of the house all the way to the back. My house has two reception rooms (living rooms) and a dining room and kitchen at the back. I decided to make the first reception room (the front room of the house) into my studio. It has a bay window at the front which juts out of the house and provides nice ample natural light.
At first, I set up my backdrop on the opposite side of the window so it was facing the window directly. The reason for this was so that I could get a much wider area for shooting. However, this is not great for dramatic lighting with natural light flooding from the window, with the camera right in between the backdrop and the window. This lends itself to flat lighting instead which isn’t what I wanted for my studio.
In order to achieve a more versatile directional lighting and avoid flat lighting from the window, I use strobes at 45-degree angles to the backdrop to get the lighting setup that I like.
Recently, I have moved things around so that I can use dramatic natural light if I want without the need for strobes, although I still have the flexibility to add strobes and artificial light if needed. This is how I’ve done it.

#1 Make sure your backdrop is at 90-degrees to the window

This angle gives you a lighting that is more dramatic as it is only coming from one side. If you position your subject so that the far side of the face is unlit, you could achieve lighting similar to the Rembrandt style or low-key portraits.

#2 It is ideal to have an L-shaped corner connecting your window light to your backdrop or wall

Having this little dark, unlit corner between your backdrop and the window gives you a 45-degree angle lighting setup which is one of my favorite set-ups. The corner minimizes the light for you to be able to create a moodier image with only the front left of the face illuminated rather than full light flooding from the side.
In terms of artificial light, this is similar to controlling the amount of light hitting your subject either by the use of grids, a strip light or a snoot. You don’t want your subject awash with light as that would make for a rather flat lighting.
My personal preference is for having both light and shadows in my images so I can sculpt my subjects using directional light. If you don’t have such a corner, you can use a V-flat (two black pieces of mountboard taped together to form a V) positioned in the corner as shown in the diagram above.

#3 Paint your wall dark or use a dark backdrop

You will be astonished at the difference a dark backdrop makes! It brings focus to the subject far more than a light backdrop can. It also lends itself to more artistic photos.

#4 Diffuse your window light

Window light, albeit coming from an angle, can still be a bit harsh. You can further soften this light by diffusing it with some white sheer curtains or voile or any fabric that can diffuse the light. The bottom half of my windows are frosted which means they are already perfectly diffused. I cover the top half with pieces of diffusion fabric to cut out the light.

#5 Use a reflector or light opposite the window

Much like in a painted portrait, reflected light is a pleasing detail found at the edge of the unlit side of the face. A silver reflector can achieve this very well with a stronger reflective light result as compared to a white reflector. I find that the gold reflectors can make the skin too warm so I stick with the silver and warm up the overall image in post-production.
The reflector does have to be positioned really close to the subject to make it more effective. If you don’t have an assistant who can hold it in place for you, get a free-standing reflector arm that you clip the reflector into thus making it easy for you to position it as needed.

Using strobes

If you want to use or add artificial light such as strobes or continuous lighting, consider a portable studio kit that you can fold and hide away when not in use. Here you can find suggestions of equipment to use for your portable studio kit.
There are many possibilities and things that you can do with this type of setup. Even with just one flash (like this tutorial), you can create dramatic home studio lighting. Another fun thing you can do with flash is creating double exposures.
These images below were taken in exactly the same spot as those above. But this time a gridded softbox was placed on the right as the main light instead of using the natural light coming from the window on the left.

I hope you found this article helpful. Please share images taken in your home studio, and if you have one or more tips on how to create portraits in a small studio space please share those too.

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