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Lesson Title: Open Up – Go Out Empty

Lesson Description: One of the best assignments you can ever have is one that gives you complete freedom.  One of the most impossibly tough and frustrating assignments you can ever have is one that gives you complete freedom.  With that in mind, here is your assignment – take your camera, close the door to your studio, walk out and take photographs.  By the way, keep this in mind; Ernst Haas, a great, great photographer said, “you don’t take pictures, you are taken by pictures,”

For some this assignment will be a piece of cake, for others it will be quite frightening.  For those of you who find this difficult or pointless, you will benefit most of all from this exercise.  If you can’t figure out what this is all about and think it sounds simplistic and stupid, you need this the most and will get the most out of it.  Remember, the only subject restrictions are that you take a picture about color.  See the video for details on that.

Take all the film or SanDisk flashcards you want.  Leave behind filters, gadgets and any preconceptions about what you are going to do.  Leave behind any visual blinders that keep you from going out as empty as you can.  Let your self be as open as possible to whatever you encounter.  Don’t plan anything.  Don’t look for anything that you’ve ever seen in some other photograph.  This is all about you, your uniqueness.  Don’t subjugate the freshness you can bring to this with anything you’ve ever seen before.  Allow yourself to shoot for 4 hours.  You can do it all at once, but in order to retain your freshness you may want to do it in 1 or 2 hour increments.

What is this all about? 

Preconceptions and planning are wonderful on jobs and will allow you to focus on a fixed problem and solution.  The visual and emotional blinders involved in this can only lead to one specific place and along the way you can miss anything & everything else that may be there.  I’m trying to get you to trust your intuition, the right side of your brain and for once let the left, analytical side go to Hell.

Be open and empty and let yourself be filled by whatever the subject is.  Let serendipity and chance work for you.  After all, you’ve trained and been trained in photography for years, “Do this.  Do that.  Don’t do this.  Don’t do that.” Everything has been specific and conscious and the emphasis has always been about the final product.  You have developed habits, attitudes and styles to solve problems. 

This is about process, not product.  This is about joy and discovery with execution and technique following not leading the parade.  Execution and technique are critically important, but in this case not the point.  The aim is to allow yourself see what’s there, to see what you’ve never seen before, to discover visual relationships that you’ve never noticed and experience the absolute joy this will give you.

Most of what I’m telling you about is from my class that I give at different workshops on perception, color, light and gesture.  One of the three most important things I tell people at these workshops has to do with the next two hours of this assignment, which is the time allowed for editing this lesson.  Realize that if you shoot well but don’t edit well, who will not know how good a shooter you are.

1. “If you are not your own severest critic, you are your own worst enemy.”

2. You are responsible for every square inch of your image. 

3. Lastly and as a guide to what I’m hoping will work for you both in shooting and in editing:

Lesson Requirements: Your life till now.

Lesson Prerequisites: An open mind.

What You Are Looking for When You Critique: I studied with Alexi Brodowitch.  He said what I say to you, “Astonish me.”

Reference Material:

A book that I have found constantly informative and thought provoking is: Art & Fear, David Bayles & Ted Orland, Image Continuum.

SanDisk Knowlege: Jay Maisel

Copyright & Rights: Please adhere to all the rules and regulations of copyright with your images and the copyright of others.

Also, listen to the audio interview on copyright with attorney Robert Cavallo in the Conference Room at Photoworkshop.com.

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