The Art of Photography - Minimalist COLOR in your photographs

Minimalist COLOR in your photographs

06/12/18 • -1 min

Lets talk again about photographing with intent. In this video I want to talk about what happens in front of your lens and how you can get really effective results by limiting your color palette. Steve McCurry's Afghan girl is an incredible example of this. Its not only a famous photograph but it has become iconic over the years. Everything in this composition supports the eyes including color. McCurry took this image on with a Nikon FM2, 105mm f/2.5 lens and used Kodachrome 64. While many contest that this is a definitive Kodachrome image, I actually argue that its the selection of colors that was important and keeping them reduced to essentially 3 - red, green and the skin-tone. AOP T-shirts! https://aop.threadless.com/ Music from Epidemic Sound: https://goo.gl/v5wWKr

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What is the photographers intention?

Intention is the point of all photography. How do you intend for your work to look? The intention of the photographer starts with the idea, concept and composition of the image and its carried all the way through to the final printed work. Photography today has changed in some ways because we tend to publish our work for screen-based devices, but the intention of the photographer - or your intent shouldn't be sacrificed. William Eggleston, Ernst Haas, Luigi Ghirri and Saul Leiter were all color photographers with different styles and different looks to their work. They represent the best photographers of their time. Yet they all shot on Kodachrome. So why does their work look vastly different from one another yet they were using the same film stock? The answer is in the intent. Each had a unique intention to how their work would look, what it would say and how it would communicate to the viewer. The answer is in the printing stage of photography. This is where decisions were made that created unique works. Printing workshop with Richard Jackson, Marielle Wilkes and Wesley Bernard https://goo.gl/LTf6AS AOP T-Shirts! https://aop.threadless.com/ Music from Epidemic Sound: https://goo.gl/v5wWKr

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The Alternate Take :: Steve McCurry's Afghan Girl Revisited

In researching further about Steve McCurry's Afghan Girl, I found an interesting alternate take of the image as well as the story behind the photograph. When we're talking about the photographer's intention, this becomes a very broad discussion. We're talking about composition, color theory and the technical things that produce the finished photograph, but there's a broader space. These are all things we have to learn in photography but when it comes to getting the shot, we have to forget all about the rule of thirds, the rule of odds and all the other technical compositional tools and we go for realizing the intent. Steve McCurry had a very clear intent when he first saw the Afghan Girl. This was expressed consciously and subconsciously throughout the entire process and ended up being one of the most famous National Geographic covers in the history of the magazine. HIGHLY recommended book of Steve McCurry Portraits: https://amzn.to/2y9f8FJ Check out the interview with Steve here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIgx-nkFL6c AOP T-Shirts! https://aop.threadless.com/ Music from Epidemic Sound: https://goo.gl/v5wWKr