Blog Author Richard Newman

I think that one of the biggest traps a visual artist can fall into is doing the same thing every time they address a subject, like setting your tripod to the same height. I’d like to suggest some visual and physical exercises to “free your visual mind”.

If I feel stuck, I take a walk, with or without the camera, and I keep 25 steps in my mind. I take 25 steps and stop. I look around and see if this is a position that has some visual interest, maybe not from my standing position, maybe I should kneel down, or find a ladder. 25 more steps, I can go in any direction, 360 different choices; there must be an image out there. 25 more steps, and the thoughts that have been clouding and distracting my mind begin to slip away. I start to concentrate on counting my steps and breathing. I begin to see what I’m looking at or, in some cases, stumbling over. I used to continue this exercise for a whole roll of film, and those days are gone. Now, without the constraints of the 36-shot syndrome, I shoot until I start to feel like what I’m seeing is unique and my own. I find this almost the perfect visual exercise. It calms my mind, it redirects my thoughts and just makes me feel better.

Take it to the next step and try this little exercise for a week. After you get through every day, put the images in a folder with the date and location as the title. After a week, open them up in a gallery format and look at them. I mean it, don’t just glance at them, study them. Look at your composition, your use of light and shadow, exposure and depth of field. Does one image pop out of the gallery at you? What did you do that makes that image special? I believe that you’ll begin to see your personal style in the images that excite you.

Often times from this exercise, I’ve seen something that made me go back for a second look, or I applied to my image-making at a later date. Here’s my mantra: look up, look down, look all around, but most of all look, because you can’t see until you do.

I welcome your comments and hope you share some images from this exercise. On a side note, we had a great TPS Talks in August, to those that attended, thanks! As always, I welcome your comments: blog@texasphoto.org.