I want to talk you through how I found a path out of the wilderness, and managed to step closer to my own vision of better composition. I recently had an experience of learning to see photography in a different way and marvelling at how one little shift in my thinking could transform how I see composition. It was like flicking a switch and the switch was there the whole time. It had been there for years but I never really noticed it.
I've been an Editorial Photographer for decades now but that doesn't mean I can't learn something new or as it happens relearn something very old that I just hadn't paid enough attention to.
A STEP FORWARD
I love the feeling of taking a step forward, of finding the right tool that will help me create the photos I want to create. My entire career has been a journey of learning to do this better and then sharing those lessons with others. I've never seen myself as a finished product. I've never thought of myself as complete. I'm always looking ahead to where I want to be and not always spending enough time just enjoying where I already am.
But lately the where I am hasn't been satisfying my creative soul. I haven't felt I was doing my best, at least not expressing my voice and my creativity. I think lots of us feel that with photography. We feel stale or predictable or just not really ourselves. I see this a lot in camera clubs where people talk about the style they're trying to emulate without really knowing why they're on that path. They were told by someone at some point that there's a certain style that everyone else likes and that they should like it too.
You cannot find your own voice if all you do is emulate others. Yes, we need inspiration, sometimes even a chance to step into the shoes of other creative souls. But we do that as a means towards finding our own direction. It's not a dead end. It's opening the door and stepping through and making connections between our experience and these new ideas.
NOT NEGATIVE
The thing that I really loved relearning a few months ago was “Negative Space”.
Such a boring name I know. Most people have no idea what Negative Space really is and even less idea why they might want to learn it. I even made a video on this which I posted here. When I make a video like the Negative Space episode, I'm digging deep. I'm sharing something that's very personal and something that's meaningful and worth your time and hopefully worth my time too. I don't make videos to feed the content machine. I make videos that I think are important. It's a ton of work this stuff, so if you see the video it's because I cared about the topic and Negative Space is kind of my new favourite flavour. It's my secret sauce at the moment.
For me this technique flipped a bunch of switches inside my head. It gave me a path to follow when it seemed like I had no path. It brought clarity to my compositions.
DE FUNKING PHOTOGRAPHY
And yes, even a professional photographer of 30 years experience can get into a funk with photography. So much of the work I have done in recent years feels formulaic to me. Commercial work just doesn't always allow for true creative freedom. Which is ironic because deep down the client chooses you specifically for your unique creative expression. But most clients are very prescriptive in what they want and it's unhelpful if you turn up and decide to head in a new direction. So your job is to give the client what they want.
And sometimes it's not even the client that's placing boundaries on you but yourself. You end up shutting down your own creative narrative. You don't have to be a professional photographer to do this. Anyone can do this. We typecast ourselves. We look back on what has worked for us or what was popular on social media and we decide yep, let's do that again.
Negative Space allowed me to hit the reset button. That was the magic ingredient for me at that moment in time. So I made a video about it and in the weeks after recording the video I delved a lot deeper into the idea and it just really really worked for me. It delivered over and over as I travelled around the Himalayas. Negative Space was guiding me to create better compositions.
I was travelling around Nepal running a couple if workshops. I love the Himalayas and I love the mountains and I love my amazing guides there. And I love the experience of just being there. It's a part of the world where I feel I can add value. I have a very deep connection to the landscape, to the cultures and the people. So each year it gets harder to find a new way to capture Nepal. Often carry a new lens to review or a different kind of camera or just some way to change up my process with photography. This year it was negative space. That was my new tool.
INTENTIONAL SPACE
And as I explained in my other video, this name is perhaps the wrong name. I think it should be called “Intentional Space”. Negative sounds like it's empty or devoid of purpose. This technique works specifically when we are intentional and have a reason for that space to be there. It's not empty space. It's complementary and it has to be there for a reason. I've often talked about the idea of leaving breathing room in compositions. Room for the subject to breathe and room for composition to happen. These are very similar frameworks.
When we're learning something new sometimes the choice of language is important and one framework just hits better than another. So Negative Space connects really well with lots of other ideas that I've taught over the years. But for me as a standalone tool that I could grab onto something solid, Negative Space became something very practical that I could implement. For those few weeks it was kind of my North Star. It guided me forward and repeatedly led me to where I wanted to be.
It's one thing to know where you want to get to but often it's hard to find that path. It's hard to find that first step that takes you closer instead of just getting lost all over again. And I love that feeling of finding a new path. I love seeing others do that on my workshops and as strange as it may seem negative space got me back into a creative zone in a way that I was really missing. It opened a door to finding new compositions and new ways to work the light.
There is nothing more wonderful as a photographer than when you capture a frame that you didn't expect. Something beautiful and a little bit magical but something made with your own hands. Being the architect of something serendipitous is just marvellous. That's why learning something new is such a buzz.
That's why I suggest that even if you think the words “Negative Space” are incredibly boring, give them a go and take a closer look.
Keep Reading
Join Ewen's newsletter for monthly updates on new photography articles and tour offers...Subscribe Here
