The Power of Sketching Your Photographic Ideas

My approach to photography has gone through an evolution over the past 6 months and I'm finally to the point where I feel like it's all coming together.

In March 2011 I took a workshop with John Paul Caponigro in Death Valley called Illuminating Creativity. This was a life changing workshop for me. This wasn't your typical photography workshop where they take you to great photographic spots and turn you loose. John Paul would take us to such places and tell us to go ahead and take the "Postcard Shot" but then we were expected to start taking the real photographs. John Paul spent a lot of time talking about creativity and how to improve our creative thought and how to make it into a process.  There were a lot of techniques discussed and I've been using many of them but the one I wanted to talk about in this post is the power of sketching.

After the workshop I purchased several artist sketchbooks and put them in my car, next to my bed, on my desk at work. Whenever I would have an idea for a photograph I would write a quick sketch in the sketchbook. Often the act of sketching it would trigger additional ideas and I would find myself filling several pages in the book. A few weeks later I would go back and read through the sketchbook and would always have additional ideas pop into my head. Often these new ideas would be completely unrelated to any of the ideas in the sketchbook. Soon I had over 60 pages of ideas to photograph and 3 months after starting the sketchbook I went out to shoot one of the ideas.

Here was the first sketch idea.

As you can see I'm not much of an artist, but I was able to sketch enough of the idea to convey the idea and remind myself of the details. Here is the resulting image:

As you can see the image is almost exactly as described in the sketchbook and I don't think I would have been able to take a photo like this if I had not planned it out first in the sketchbook.

A fellow photographer friend approached me a few weeks later and asked for my help in doing a Little Red Riding Hood themed shoot. I didn't really have any ideas ready for such a shoot so I started thinking about it and over the next few days wrote my ideas in the sketchbook. Here is the result.

 

Here are the resulting photos

Again the resulting photographs were very similar to the ideas in the sketchbook.

Over the next couple of months I continued adding ideas to the sketchbook and realized I was coming up with a lot of ideas but not implementing any of them. So I booked some models and over the next couple of weeks knocked off 4 ideas from the sketchbook. Here's the latest

So just like a filmmaker will make a storyboard for their film, making a sketch of the photo idea helps to visualize the idea and acts as a reminder for all the details.

When I started the workshop with John Paul Caponigro I was very skeptical of the whole sketching idea. I am more of a left brain type guy and sketching seemed more right brain and not for me. But I decided to try everything John Paul suggested and have been ecstatic with the result. As I said the workshop changed my approach to photography (hopefully for the better :) ). The sketchbook is a now a solid part of my workflow and is a tool I will use for the rest of my photographic career. Give it a try.

Photography Marketing Magic with Sandy Puc'

Sandy Puc' - How to Make Pigs Fly, and Other Marketing Magic! from Frederick Van Johnson on Vimeo.

I attended this presentation by Sandy Puc' a few weeks back in Palo Alto and was blown away by her presentation. During the presentation I remember thinking to myself, "I suck" and was depressed that I had not accomplished even 25% of what Sandy has with her photography business, but by the end of the presentation I was inspired and have been working on improving my business and marketing.

This is a 2 hour long video and there are a few technical glitches at the beginning, but it's worth taking the time to watch.

Carpe Occasione

Seize the Opportunity! I often find myself coming across great photo opportunities that I pass up because I'm in a rush, or I think to myself I will come back and get that photo some other time. But I rarely do, and if I do return, conditions have often changed, the lighting has changed, there are a crowd of people present, etc.

So now, I seize the opportunity and take the photo right then and there. Last week I was driving to work and saw a piano on the side of the road. I was just barely going to be on time for work, but I also realized that the piano might not be there when I returned back home. So I flipped a u-turn, pulled out the camera and took photos for 10 mins. When I finally did get to work, I WAS late and there were a couple of people waiting for me. But occasionally it's worthwhile being late. On my way home that night, the piano was still there but had been moved off the road into the bushes, the next day it was gone completely. So if I had not stopped, I would have never gotten the photos.

This principle can also be used for photographic subjects that will always be there like the Golden Gate Bridge. I was driving north through San Francisco a couple of weeks ago with my daughter and explained to her than after we crossed the bridge we were going to have to stop for me to take photos because, "it's a rule that as a photographer you have to take a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge whenever you cross it". She called me a nut, but there is some truth to the rule. I have taken photos of the Golden Gate Bridge dozens of times and everytime it looks different. Some are from different perspectives, some have different lighting, some have fog, some don't, but everyone is different.

So sieze the opportunity and take that photo now!