Expanding the subjects we photograph.

We have so many preconceptions of what we should photograph.  It must be beautiful.  It must fit our image of nature or people.  However, we can think beyond our usual models of what to photograph and be open to everyting we come across.  If it attracts our eye shoot it!  The two photographs here were taken one day on a trip to an antique shop.  It was great fun really opening my eyes and seeing  objects which I've really seen before.   You may wish to do the same.

Still Walking With My Cat

It's been awhile since I've posted here. Sometimes life takes over and there's so much to do.

We are still doing the Walking With My Cat exercise.  I haven't heard back from anyone on whether you've tried it or not but it's fun to begin to think about seeing the world from a different perspective - our small pet - and how it would look.

We usually see life from a very narrow strip depending on how tall we are.

The photo in this blog was taken from my window sill which is a favorite spot for my crazy cat Metta.  She will sit there for hours looking out and watching the birds.  It's a view through a curtain onto a red side shed in my yard.  I enjoy the texture the curtains provide and the "pop" the red adds.

So spend the next week playing with this and post some photos online or send a few to me and I will post them to this blog.  I'd love to see how you view the world from a different perspective.

It's really difficult to figure out how a cat sees things but here's a photo of a fireplace and gloves along with some fireplace tools.

I just walked along on my knees through my house and when I thought I wanted to take a photo, I bent down as low as I could get and tried to see with new eyes.

I will keep on working on this for the next week or so.

See what you can come up with!

Perspective - Take a Walk with a Cat

As a photographer if we change our position we change our perspective.

Above is a photograph I took when I decided to take a walk around my home from the perspective of my cat. I don't know if cats can see color but this is seeing something from the same position as my cat. It's a photo of a comforter on a bed. Very close up and personal.

I found it a very interesting exercise and got some shots that I wouldn't ordinarily get.

Dig out some knee pads, a towel or small pillow and move around your home or outdoors at about the same level as a cat.

Then see what happens. I will share more of these later but would love to have you share what you have done as well.

Perspective

This photography represents a young child's perspective on how to use a placemat for a dog.
Notice that the bowls are above the placemat but still lined up and the placemat is a "place" for the dog to sit or stand and eat. I find it wimsical and very, very fresh.

One creative aspect of taking photographs is to shift perspectives. That means being able to conceive of an object from someone else's perspective like the one here - what a child would conceive a placemat is used for.

Or our perspective can shift from centered to above or below the object. A change in how we "usually" see things.

Imagine taking a photograph of a person from below - which you're probably used to if you're short. But what does an adult look like to a child? Perhaps a set of knees, belly, breasts, chin and nose. Or taking a photo of a person from above them as though you are tall. Then you might see a part in a person's hair, the top of the nose, lip line from above shoulders. You get the picture!

We'll talk a bit more about perspective in preparation for our next activity when we will have an exercise that will help us do that.

Meanwhile think about what would be different and creative in your photography if you changed the perspective from one that you always use.

End of Tomato Activity - Watch for New Activities

This is close to the end of the tomato activity. I hope everyone will send in their links so we can view and comment on what you did. It will be fun to share what we did and why we did it.

Among other things this was an exercise in perspective. We will have more activities on perspective over time.

I've posted some of my photos in Picasa so you can check them out there - see the our different links on the side of this blog.

We often get stuck in one or a couple of perspectives of an object or person rather than taking a 360 degree look at it. So our photography can become stale. Now a tomato from different perspectives can look very much the same but maybe not. One of the ways we get stuck in our own perspective is how we may "feel" about an object or person. In my case, I love tomato sauce but I'm not to crazy about eating fresh tomatoes (in fact I don't like them - gasp.)

So I'm not sure that a tomato that isn't part of a spaghetti dinner is a "food" to me. So this was a stretch. I started by taking a series of snaps of my garden tomatoes which were pretty vague except for one that looked very decent (green tomato photo) because I got into the pattern of a series of tomatoes with rain drops on them.

Then I got a bit more adventurous but only enough to set up a tomato on a white plate (for contrast) and surrounded by a knife and fork. It probably looks both dangerous and blah again because I'm not excited by tomatoes as food.

But I love the color and out of boredom I decided to "play" with the tomato imaginatively. Hence my photos of the tomato in a line up with children's action figures, a bunch of "people" looking towards the tomato, a king of the tomato on top of it, and then an eerie angel visiting the soon to be deceased tomato. So I wound up using props a lot and then the fun of it took over.

So maybe you love tomatoes, have different types of tomato, different colored tomatoes. My guess would be everyone approached this exercise in their own unique way.

Please put your photos up and send links to the blog so we can see what you did. And by all means comments are welcome. I'm convinced we will learn a lot from each other by doing this.

Seeing with Our Eye Before We Use Our Camera’s Eye

Doing the “tomato activity” I’ve become more aware of how a camera captures everything that I point it at yet I may miss all that “background stuff” behind “my focus object.”

At birth our eyes see everything in our field of vision but we soon learn to focus and eliminate extra stimulus. If we didn’t’ we’d be overwhelmed. But cameras capture everything.

Have you ever taken a picture of a person or object and realize afterwards that you “missed” the angry waiter in the background or the ugly object behind that beautiful flower or tree? I’ve taken tons of photos of flowers only to find out when I look at them afterwards that there are ants on those beautiful petals or a moth eaten leaf behind the bright red rose.

Notice the flower in this post. If you look closely you'll see two ants just sitting there!

Using digital cameras we haven’t had to learn the discipline of seeing everything before us (like our camera’s eye does) since we don’t have to pay for film and film developing. With photo editing we can even eliminate the flaws with a bit of extra work.

However, if we learn to spend more time really seeing what we want to photograph and pay attention to everything that’s really there, we’ll begin to develop the “art” of photography – because it’s not really the camera that’s doing the work of seeing, capturing and enjoying. We are.

Tomato Shoot Is On

The tomato shoot is on. This is a pretty standard looking tomato so let's see what everyone can do with a tomato or bunch of tomatos. Don't forget you can use props, so have fun with this one.

Send me Link to Your Photos on Line

Hi,
I've finally worked out how to link my photos on line with the blog so send me your link (URL address) and I'll list them on the blog so others can have access to them. You can either email your link to me or post it in a comment. That should work.

Open Eye Photography Workshop

Welcome. Open Eye Photography Workshop is a blog for people who love to learn more about their cameras, produce creative and exciting photographs and enjoy doing special activities that are challenging and unique. You are welcome to participate in each activity and it's hoped that at the end you will share the specified number of photographs with others by posting them on Flickr.

Let's get started.

Seven Day Tomato Study

August 1 to August 7, 2009

Have fun with this. This is a way we can begin to open our eye to new possibilities in our photography by challenging ourselves and by sharing with each other the results of our play. This is not a competition and we want to approach this as a way to learn from each other.

Over 7 days and nights take at least 20 photographs of a tomato (or tomatoes). You may choose what type or types of tomato to photograph and may need to replace the original one(s) if they get yucky but try not to take photographs of 20 different tomatoes.

Don’t approach this activity with any ideas in mind but be playful and try to “see” what a tomato is and “speaks” to you.

You can “stage” the photographs if you like by using other objects or people or you can strictly take photographs of tomato(s) which lend themselves to visually telling a story or evoke a feeling. Or you may wish to get into using your macro lens and see a tomato in new ways.

For this activity, please don’t Photo Shop or edit it but you can rotate or crop it. Let’s leave other editing for another activity.

At the end of the 7 days carefully review your work and select 3 that you would like to share with others on Flickr. You'll need to open an account on Flickr to do this.

If you have any questions contact me at skylake5@myfairpoint.net or via this blog. At the end of the time post to this blog so we can share our photos with each other.