We Like Books With Lots of Pictures

We like pictures.

Photographs, paintings, pen & ink drawings,...you name it, we'll study it. I particularly like magazine photography. (Ready Made and Budget Travel are two of my faves.) Tim enjoys fine art and photography. (Big David Hockney fan.) What do you pore over? Ads? Fine photography magazines? Goodnight, Moon? Great! It's excellent food for the PhotoBlitzing brain. All good visual art will help you develop a sense of design, color, composition, and your own aesthetic. So, if you haven't been studying pics, you should start. Start now, in fact.

How was that? Did that trigger a little tickle in your brain? How about this?

Okay, granted, these are just our own photos. And our stuff isn't hanging in the Getty or gracing the pages of Vanity Fair. Still, it's not a bad idea to look at other people's pics. See what they're doing. See what they're not doing. Then look at your own work and see if there's something you can apply -- or, avoid like the plague. Also, you must check out the work of renowned photogs and professionals. Really study their pics. (Hint: They're great for a reason.)

Sound like work? Nah! It's fun! You won't even need the reading glasses. And all this study will help you. Almost magically. Because these images will sneak in and lodge themselves in your gray matter, influencing your photo chops, to whatever level you decide to advance. They will increase your ability to "see", in a mental/visual sense. (Though you'll probably still need reading glasses. It's not that magical.) The result: You may find you like a certain perspective. You may decide you want to try a different style. You may ask yourself, how do I work this? You may ask yourself, am I right, am I wrong? You may say to yourself, my god, what have I done? [Note to self: don't blast Talking Heads while writing.] Anyway, the point is this: You will find your own vision by looking at the visions of others.

Thanks to our friend, John "Danger" Mills, of Capture the Moment, for suggesting this article from the Digital Photography School: How I Use Inspiration Shots from Other Photographers. It's a short piece by Elizabeth Halford on, well, just what the title says. Read it. Then go look at pictures.

Letting the days go by, into silent water, Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground...