Push yourself to improve with….. a Phone and social media ??

Yesterday I taught a small seminar for the Photoclub at Delft and during a few of the conversations the idea for this blog post grew.

Today we almost all have a telephone with a camera, when you are using an iPhone4 you are even one of the lucky ones that have a rather good camera and a great videocamera, but how can we use this to improve our own photography and video capabilities ?

What does a good photographer set aside from a bad one ?
We all know the critiques that are posted online, too flat light, blown out areas, bad subject etc. but what some people don’t realize is that this is all technique, often people will comment on technique when the shot itself doesn’t work, or is not appealing……
Hardly ever will a photo be critiqued this way when the viewer is just in awe for the composition, color or the subject.
So when we could make images that work we become better photographers ????

Now how do we learn to make this all work in our own photography ?
As Chase Jarvis said a while ago “The best camera is the camera with you”.
I can’t agree more.
What he meant with this, is that as long as you can take the shot TAKE IT, it doesn’t matter if it’s with an iPhone, DSLR, P&S or MF camera, just take the shot.

So how to become better photographers you might ask, well the answer is rather simple.
When we look at the real good images they are often setting themselves apart by having interesting lines, color interaction, or are simply interesting due to the whole image. However a lot of photographers have problems with getting this into their own work, somehow they pick up the DSLR and stay on the safe site. I see this a lot with my own students, I tell them to crop in the camera but somehow they want to show more, and when they show more they want even more, in other words they are often “afraid” to just cut off parts of the model to make the composition stronger.

So how does a telephone help with this ?
Well that’s actually quite easy to explain.
How often does it happen that you are sitting in a train, airport, waiting room being bored out of your mind ?
For me it happens a lot, however I try to make those moments interesting, just take out your camera phone and start exploring the surrounding areas. Try to make interesting compositions from subjects that look totally uninteresting, because the camera phones are so small you can experiment a lot more than with a DSLR. Try angles that you would normally never think off, but also try close ups, out of focus, upside down shots with details, artistic approaches with maybe pieces of colored material in front of the lens etc. all the things you somehow normally don’t do, and let’s be honest what else to do with your time in those situations.

The fun thing about this approach is that with each shot you take you are learning how to recognize patterns and interesting options to shoot, but just go wild don’t do the safe things, but tilt the camera to enhance lines, the live view is of course great for this.

Going one step further
For me the iPhone4 changed everything, I’m not using the camera that much except for shooting the backstage images and playing with it like I described above. But what I do use A LOT is the video options. I love it so much that at the moment with almost every photoshoot I try to shoot backstage material. The quality outside is stunning and inside acceptable. During our workshops in Dublin I decided to buy iMovie for the iPhone and that has enhanced my feeling for the video options a lot.

At the moment I do a photoshoot and film app 2-3 minutes of material, right after the photoshoot during the backup and import process I make a small movie with iMovie on the iPhone and before I start doing the work on the images the video is often already online. Now one could think “why ?” and that’s the problem with most people and I see this a lot during the seminars.

Social media on the max
We live in an age and era where social media cannot be waved away as “for the childeren” or “not interesting for pros”.
The idea is to get your work out there, we can of course make the most beautiful images but if no-one sees them, why do we make them ?
Well some of you will say “for myself” and that is ok of course.
But some of you will also love it when they are being followed by people that like your work, get some assignments and slowly (or fast) grow into the business of photography, with social media like facebook, hyves and twitter everyone is given a platform to ventilate their thoughts, work and live.

I strongly believe that some parts of our lives should stay off the social media, I for example don’t care if someone buys a banana at the local grocery store, eats it, and you know what else 😀 I do however love to follow the people I look up to (or colleagues) in their daily work. I love to see backstage images, videos and the endresult. I love it even more when I can see how something is build, so that’s what I try to do with my account on twitter (see the bottom for the account links) and facebook. I try to show people a part of my work and try to do that as complete as possible, meaning the bigger events but also the smaller ones are shown in text or small snapshots, and seeing the responses we get it’s something people love.

So how did it start for me ?
One of my students couldn’t come to a workshop due to family problems and he was really sorry about that, because I knew he had internet access in the hospital where he had to wait I said to him to keep looking at twitter, during that day I tweeted almost every lightsetup, backstage images, small videosnaps and information to his account, some parts were also tweeted in the normal time line. To my surprise my account got a LOT of new followers and we received a lot of mails with questions if we would please do this more often, ever since we did.

By introducing video we are not showing one image, but a lot of images keeping people looking at the work a lot longer than they would be with only the end result. In fact we are showing much more images than we ever could with just photography. Also seeing the change from print to iPad like devices I strongly believe that video will be much much bigger than we can ever imagine now. Add social media to that and the faster internet (making high quality video possible) and we can see a bright future for the photographers that can show not only images but also some video, and trust me it doesn’t have to be hollywood quality, our backstage videos are just a collection of shots taken during that day but it does work and people are coming back for more and more.

The nice added result is that people will start to interact with you, and if you want to start doing well you better be ready for interacting back, that’s the strong point if you want to really benefit from social media, the so called static pages are nice but in the end won’t last I think. When people asked me for an iPhone app with several links that was the first setup for the app, however I wanted more… so two days after the release we added a chatbox in which people can ask questions and I will answer them within a few hours (or at least the same day if we have internet access). In having that chatbox in the iPhone app I hope to give people something unique and something to keep coming back instead of having just a collection of links app (which is not wrong of course).

Feel free to share your opinions, retweet or share this article.

The links :
www.twitter.com/frankdoorhof

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Frank-Doorhof/14619815540374

The iPhone app can be bought by clicking the link at the top of the page.