Lessons
Meet Your Master
06:33 2Influences
17:38 3Looking At Pictures
08:23 4The Street Is Ours
14:02 5The Magician's Trick
10:42 6Aftermath
10:16 7Composition
07:46 8Ideas For Composition
13:24Street Photography
04:13 10Cape Light
14:36 11Black And White vs Color
07:44 12The Meyerowitz Color Zone System
06:17 13Finding Your Subject
06:09 14Observation
04:41 15Let Light Be The Subject
11:31 16Seeing Your Neighborhood In A Fresh Way
05:14 17Portraiture
09:40 18Workshop Rachel
14:43 19Workshop Alex
10:09 20Workshop Heather
11:18 21Workshop Olivia
11:20 22Workshop Steve
11:39 23Landscape
10:30 24How To See When You Travel
06:32 25Follow Your Curiosity
04:34 26What Is Still Life?
16:44 27Conversations Between Objects
08:37 28Lets Make A Still Life
09:38 29Tuscany - Inside The Light
19:14 30Editing Is A Way To Give Form To Your Work
12:48 31Make A Print
10:11 32Everyone Can Make A Book Now
08:20 33Life As A Photgrapher
10:08 34Farewell
01:41Lesson Info
Ideas For Composition
(soft music) Composition is anything you wanna make of it really. You've got a frame, you're gonna fill it with the things that appeal to you. But you know there's some funny things that people do early on in, it's a way of helping establish your sense of what's important in a frame. So sometimes people do a picture within a picture, or you could say a frame within a frame. For example. Here's a photograph that I made, that's basically about a frame within a frame. It's a doorway in a building with another door in it and then I put the frame on. And really what was so interesting to me was that as I walked by this building, what I first noticed was a little square of blue, which was the sea, and the sunlight on the sand, and the quality of the sky and the little cloud in the sky and it struck me that the sea looked like a square, and the square was inside the rectangle of the door and the door was inside the rectangle of the building and the whole building was inside the rectangle of...
my camera and I thought, oh, it's such an interesting way of entering the frame and going out the other side into the sunlight, and so the call to make this picture came in a very direct and persuasive manner and I stood there and made the photograph and went on about my life, but it brings to mind that this is something to kinda stay open to because photographs, when we look at them, should invite us in. They don't necessarily wanna push us away. You want people to look at your photograph and enter into the moment that you responded so fully to. Because those are often poetic moments. A moment when your consciousness is so excited by where you are that you enter the space yourself and you record the entirety of the space, and that's what makes art. Your consciousness and your attention. (soft music) So another way of thinking about composition or space is to think about the beautiful chaos that we see in the world at large. I remember many years ago I was walking past something in the countryside and there was a chain link fence and behind the fence was a great big, hairy guy with his shirt off and he was talking into a phone booth, a phone box on a telephone pole. Not a phone booth, one of those emergency telephone boxes on a pole. So his head was covered, all I saw was a hairy body on a big guy with his head covered, and then layers of chain link fence and shadow coming through it and the whole thing looked like somebody had taken a photograph of a man and then had erased it and crossed it out, and it was about complexity rather than simplicity. And I responded to it immediately. And yet at that time I was pretty young and it was a kind of, an odd thing for me to do and when I showed that picture to John Szarkowski who was the head of the Museum of Modern Art's photo department, he said, "Oh, I wanna put that "in an exhibition," and there I was, a young photographer and I made a risky photograph and someone who knew about photography thought it was interesting enough to hang it in exhibition. So you never know what chaos is going to bring to you. I'll show you, I have another photograph here that in a way is about the beauty of chaos. I was doing a commissioned work in St. Louis many years ago and I was walking down the street and I saw these three old buildings. The rest of the neighborhood had already fallen down and there were these three old sort of limestone apartment buildings stuck to each other. And I thought, wow, they're so tender and tragic and this whole neighborhood is falling apart but they're still together. However, there were some trees in front of them, and as I looked at the building I thought, ah, these trees are like a screen over the building. I'm gonna add them to the picture rather than working around and finding a position where there were no trees, and so, I added a layer of density, a layer of complexity, and it was only for fun. I could have just walked around it and made another picture but when I saw the result, it just felt absolutely right to me. And I think that's the way composing on the fly works. Something appears, you feel a gut response to it and then, you have an adjustment of your mind, should I or shouldn't I? I think you just should. If your first impression says, ooh, this is interesting, go with that because you must trust your instincts at every level of life. Your instincts are gonna save you. They're gonna help invent the persona that you want to project into the world because they're your instincts. They're not the guy standing next to you. So what you are as an instinctive human being creature, a human animal is what you're gonna photograph with. I think, I think you've got a great tool, a great asset right there. (soft music) There's something else I'd like to add to your arsenal of tactics in terms of composition, and remember, composition is anything you wanna make it. But the world offers you lots of opportunities and sometimes, something comes up that you might wanna keep in mind. I call it the freeze. I'm gonna show you. I call it the freeze. Sometimes you're in a place and you know what a freeze is? A freeze is usually on top of a pediment of a building, it's lots of figures in Greek and Roman times they would put a freeze in. But a freeze is sometimes a whole bunch of people sitting on a bench, walking across the frame. They're in some kind of alignment, and they form a freeze right in front of you, and behind them, you can see the rest of the image. It's something to keep in mind, that's all I'm saying is that opportunities present themselves and you could say to yourself, oh, there's too many people there blocking the shot. Or, you could say all of these people in front of this place are adding a layer of interest to the scene behind, because when you make the photograph, you will have both the layer in front and the space and the depth behind it, so it's important in thinking about composition to just remember that a photograph flattens space. A photograph is a two-dimensional object. We see three-dimensionally, but if you cover one eye, you will begin to see like a camera. You take away the third dimension. So it's important to act like a camera and see like a camera and remember that the background and the foreground are all in relation to each other. That will give you plenty of opportunities to make photographs in which you bring these spaces up to the front plane, which is where the photograph happens. And you can do it with people, you can do it with landscape, these things are all interchangeable, and in fact, the frame within a frame, and beautiful chaos and the freeze are all parts of the same puzzle that you work with when you walk around in ordinary life, whether it's the landscape or a city or the countryside or portraits, it's all a game. (soft music) You know, there's one more consideration of what composition can do for you, and that is the portrait. I mean what is a portrait and who is it of? Those are legitimate questions but let's just deal with the portrait, the portrait's of somebody you wanna make a picture of. It could be a family member, it could be a stranger. It could be a group of people. How you go about a portrait is really up to you, but consider where the person is in the frame. And you bring them close to you, you leave a little space maybe for something in the background to be seen, you have them fill the frame, you turn the frame sideways so they could appear on one side and there's emptiness over here or you bring a bunch of people in so they pack the frame. It's a live consideration happening in the moment and really as inventive and playful as you can be when you're dealing with a portrait, is part of the pleasure of making photograph. Come in really tight, maybe you start tight so that you're just dealing with eyes, nose and mouth, and then you pull away for the whole head and then you pull away for half a figure and then you pull away so it's the whole figure and then it's the figure small in the space with a lot of space around them. It's rich with possibilities, so I urge you, when you're in any of these situations, feel playful, don't allow yourself to become rigid and fixed in a way where you tie yourself down. Photography is an endless stream of click click click click click click click, you can make as many pictures as you want, and you make it on the revelation that you have that your instincts are driving you, go in close, you know, pull over to the side. If you listen to that little Jiminy Cricket on your shoulder if you remember Pinocchio, you'll have somebody giving you a kind of whisper in the ear, do this, try that. And it makes it much more fun and after all, living is fun, seeing is fun and making photographs is really the most incredible enjoyment you can have as a passionate pastime.
Ratings and Reviews
Gail King
I have an all access pass and thought oh no, I have to pay for this one? I bit the bullet and I am so glad I did. Joel has a great deal of wisdom and experience because of his age. BUT, despite his age, he exudes a fountain of enthusiasm, playfulness, curiousity and constant wonder surrounding his subjects. He opened within me the possibilities of exploring different photographic subjects and allowing myself to experience the fun in pursuit of those subjects. I love the way he shows how someone can take the same ho hum scene, but then look around for a different point of view. He is indeed a Master and I thank Joel for the class.
rorofot
This is a absulutely fantastic class. Joel Meyerowitz takes you on an journey of little but important advices. In each short video you got some jewels to improve your approach, your view and your art. I own a lot of classes here on CL, but this one is one of my favourits! Gentle and human. Thank you Joel Meyerowitz, you helped me a lot on my journey to develop my photography.
SUsan Dunker
This class is well worth the money that I spent. Joel's enthusiasm and love for photography is contagious. I will watch the course again to take notes so that I can put many of these ideas into practice. I kept stopping the videos as I neared the end as I didn't want the lessons to be ending. Its well with the price of admission! Thank you for such a great course.
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