stockie's imago

A great year has just left and another awesome year is waiting ahead.

2011

Tho it has been quite a while since the last update, hopefully, 2011 will give ample chances for me to rant and share a thing or two about photography.

I’ll start a thing or two, not in those new year resolution kinda thing, but more towards ongoing project — I wanna shoot more of portrait. I find that I’m very weak in this area and more often than not, I’m lost to what and how I wanna shoot people. Especially those at my disposal to give directions.

Few exciting things for 2011 would be revival of i-Nature Workshops. This year will see more of it and most exciting is collaboration with Ted Adnan as co-facilitator. Checkout this space more often to get updates of i-Nature Tip-of-Borneo on April 2011.

I’m also looking at time and opportunity to be up north in Kedah/Perlis for another i-Nature in Feb/Mar and possibly incorporated together with Ted Adnan’s Location Lighting Workshop! Hmm.. that would be fun!

I hope it’s not too late to wish everyone Happy New Year 2011. Tho, I might not agree with the commotion and hoo haa about it. To me it is just another year, and I didn’t mean in pessimistic way but more of realizing that every moment, minute, hour, day, month and year is special and holy as it provides a new opportunity to reflect, making new choices and moving on….

After back from the mosque in the morning, I saw my cousin sister already fully dressed in Baju Kurung and invite her for a portrait.

[Stunning Sara]

A550 | f3.5  | 1/1,250s | 1/32 WL flash from left.

PP done :

• smoothen face
• bringing out eye
• increase overall vibrant of the image.

All these will be covered in i-Nature 2010 KK. Remind me if i forgotten since PP is covered at nite and will be based on basic PP for nature photography. <wink>

I was asked this question, “What are the tips about composition to make the photo looks more creative?” I saw the same questions been asked again and again by newbies thru online medium.

The best part is, I couldn’t really come out with any satisfying short answers to that. In fact, the question itself sounds great but I couldn’t really grasp the meaning and intentions. It sounds good. No doubt about it. It sounds smart as well, and I won’t argue on that too. But I still couldn’t get the essence of the question.

Before I’m able to answer it, there are few questions that I must ask first.

1. As the intention is to make the photo looks more creative. What does he/she means by creative? Would it be fresh, never been seen before, weird, disturbing or what?
2. What photos? Which genre? Would it be people? One person in a park? A pre-wed couple? Sunset and landscape? It may means so many things to many different situation.
3. Tips about composition. Which composition? Will it be leading line? Rule of third? Perspective or combination?

The only best answer that I can think of is this :

1. Read and understand about composition guides
2. Practise every composition guides available
3. And most importantly is knowing what you wanna achieve with that photo or what is the intention.

Because only by able to become aware and understand point no 3, one will be able to use certain composition rules to bring out the message across. And only by then, one be able to set mood to the photo thru color and exposure.

During i-Nature, there are at least 4 modules that we shall discuss more about this topic because to me, it is among the most difficult topic in photography to master. It’s about how to train our eyes to see. And to train our eyes to see cannot be achieve by reading. One must know the guidelines in composition, experiment and understand when and why we use such technique. I usually kick-start with few composition guidelines like leading line and rule of third but most importantly is understand the reason why we shoot the way we shoot. To become aware of our motives and intentions. To express internal message thru photos. And that, and by then, the composition and exposure start making sense in photography.

After all, what’s nice and correct?