Creative Photographs: Tourist Locations

Creative Photographs: Tourist Locations

Camera & Technology

May 15, 2019 ·

David Osborn

The Key is Aesthetic Skill.

How many times do you walk away from a scene saying ‘I couldn’t see a good picture? The tourist location is generic by definition – everyone standing in the same spot will get the same photograph; but this does not mean it cannot become a great artistic photograph. The key is ‘What you do to the photograph’. We tend to stop short – expecting the camera to do all the work; create the finished image. This is totally unrealistic – the camera can only record what is in front of it.

You record the same photograph as everyone else – but you can create a different photograph to everyone else!

The Old Town Hall, Prague, Czech Republic. All the photos were taken on a one-week workshop in Prague.

The camera records. Photoshop creates.

‘Great’ pictures rarely ‘just happen’ – those are your lucky shots. There was a saying in my Reuters news photography days – ‘if you saw it, you missed it’ – by the time you set up, it was too late. It is the ability to ‘create’ pictures not ‘take’ pictures that defines the creative photographer. Creativity is intensely enjoyable and creates images that stand out; essential in a world today awash with generic images. The skill of creative photographers is to gain inspiration from a scene that may at first glance, appear uninspiring even bland but see creative potential in the detail. Use the camera as the starting point. The subject is not unique to you – your transformation is. ‘Seeing a good picture’ is not judging the scene in a literal way, but ‘seeing how you can transform the scene’ – then decide if you can ‘see a good picture’.

‘What the camera recorded’ – bland and uninspiring, but what beautiful architecture. I knew it had to make a beautiful image, so I waited to shoot additional frames to overlay when the light hit the window and tower in the center of the image. It was the detail I knew would spark the picture into life.

Aesthetic Skills – The Missing Link

However, just because you ‘can’ transform a scene, does not mean every scene will be a great picture – it won’t. How do you tell which will and which won’t? You need a set of criteria to provide the answer – to spot the rough diamonds you can polish into sparkling gems!
Creativity needs an idea then technical skills to turn that idea into print – Yes – but there is a missing link: Aesthetic skills. Aesthetic skill is the artistic ‘language’ of image making. Aesthetic skill turns crude ideas into beautifully crafted and refined artistic statements – the bridge between abstract ideas and the cold mechanics of making the image; technical skills. Think of a car engine analogy: Aesthetic skill is understanding the ‘whole concept’ of how a car engine works. Technical skills, only the ability to take the engine apart. Technical skill is only a means to an end; production. Aesthetic skill is understanding how to craft beauty, composition, harmony, light, mood, drama and atmosphere in your pictures throughout the whole process; craftsmanship. Without aesthetic knowledge, the creative flow from idea to technical skill is broken; the result crude and unsophisticated, unrefined, having no artistic quality. Aesthetic skill is the core creative skill and aesthetic skills are best learnt from history’s most qualified and best practitioners: Old Master Painters.

The Astronomical Clock, Prague, Czech Republic. A ‘before & after’ image can be seen on my website.

Why old master painters – they create their paintings from scratch, photographers don’t. Painters are forced to understand aesthetic quality because it dictates their very first brush mark on pure white canvas. Digital cameras give you a ‘ready-made’ picture; even without thinking. The ease of getting the image removes the pressure to understand the aesthetics of image making like painters do. The result; you stop the creative process short, accept what the camera gives you with just a minor polish and your photograph ends up looking like everyone else. They have low aesthetic quality. Knowledge of old master painting contains many lessons that are as relevant today as your camera and post-production skills. As photographers we can underestimate the knowledge, sheer volume and diversity of this fantastic resource; hundreds of painters, hundreds of years – all trying to solve the same visual questions and problems you are. The old master painters were commercial artists in the very highly competitive world of gaining lucrative commissions from the church, royalty or aristocracy. They had to create visual solutions that worked and appealed. Why would their solutions not appeal now? Why not learn from them?

Creativity requires a fundamental change in your whole approach to photography; from a fragmented ‘shoot then polish’ approach to a far more holistic approach. After running workshops for a few years, I realized what clients were really wanting to learn was not Photoshop skills, but learn aesthetic skills – aesthetic quality was what was missing in their work – they just couldn’t put their finger on it. The holistic workflow I teach, factors-in all the essential aesthetic techniques the old master painters used because their techniques work – they are the aesthetic masters. Aesthetic quality is also the essential quality of good photography. Their lessons are directly responsible for my creating the images shown here – photographs taken during a one-week workshop in Prague, Czech Republic earlier this year – all popular views and available to every tourist, but these have more aesthetic quality. The most common comment on workshops is, ‘I don’t know how I want my pictures to look’ or ‘I don’t have a personal style’. The solution is to look at works of art, photographs and paintings, you love and that inspire you. Be influenced by them, copy them.

Prague Castle, Czech Republic. A ‘before & after’ image can be seen on my website.

How to Learn Aesthetic Skills from Old Master Painters

When I say ‘Old Master Painters’ – did you think Rembrandt. If I said ‘Rembrandt’ – did you think ‘light’. Rembrandt was all about portraying light – light creates the life, mood, drama and atmosphere. Light is the soul of all pictures, photographic or painted. If you understand how Rembrandt communicated light in his paintings – would it not provide invaluable knowledge for how you could treat light in your photograph? Why not learn the same skills and employ the same techniques as a photographer?

The Dancing House, Prague, Czech Republic.

How do you learn from old master paintings? Ask the paintings questions. Pick a specific subject, light, mood, drama etc. How did they portray spatial depth? How did they separate buildings and make buildings look three-dimensional? What techniques did they use to emphasize the main subject? The questions you can ask is endless! See what answers they give; what their solution was to a specific problem. See if other painters used the same solution. When looking at your answer in the painting, run through in your mind, how could you recreate that effect in Lightroom or Photoshop. Dutch painters painted street scenes, landscapes and seascapes – how much of the light and mood, the drama was really in front of them while painting the image? – how much was ‘created’ from imagination? – their scenes may have been as bland as my photographs are before post-production.
Now, when you ask: ‘Does this make a good picture?’, you can ask yourself, ‘How would Rembrandt treat the scene?’ – your aesthetic knowledge learnt in part from old master painters, gives you vast new points of reference to now see the creative potential in the scene you are looking at.

The Dancing House, Prague as shot using a panoramic head and stitching multiple images together in PTGui.

Production is your idea communicated with aesthetic values and executed with technical skills. Previsualization is the same as production, just done mentally before taking a photograph while looking at the scene. The more knowledge you have in all areas, the better you can previsualize ‘what the scene could become’ before taking the photograph. This is the criteria you use to decide ‘if you can see a good picture’. Can I create a photograph with aesthetic quality? How many scenes have you walked away from in the past that could have become beautiful diamonds?

David Osborn | Professional Photographer London – Workshops.

I run one-to-one workshops here in the UK and worldwide that take you in an easy, step-by-step way through the complete process of creating the images shown here with aesthetic quality, from camera to print. Including creating images using multiple row panoramic heads and PTGui software. You can read more information about my one-to-one workshops, the digital workflow I teach, tutorials and see more photographs with ‘before and after sliders’ all on my visit website at:

http://www.photoshopworkshops.com/landscape-photography-workshops/

David Osborn

May 2019

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David Osborn

See all articles by David Osborn

Born and raised in London, David began his working life as a news photographer and picture editor with Reuters News Agency in London, covering everything from royalty to conflict. David then moved into corporate photography shooting annual reports for international companies mainly in the electronics industry. David spent 35 years working as a professional photographer all over the world. Over the years, David combined his passion for the outdoors and photography with his interest in old master painting, shooting his own landscape photography and selling them in galleries in the USA and Dubai. This grew into his full time work now, teaching landscape photography and Photoshop. David runs personal photography workshops all over the world, mainly in Europe, teaching his unique landscape photography and Photoshop skills to photographers as one week personal workshops. Teaching photographer's to use photography as a creative and artistic medium for creating beautiful fine art landscape photographs with mood and drama. It has often been said, David's photographs look like paintings. This is what makes his photographs unique. Drawing on a lifetime of professional working photography experience, and his detailed knowledge of old master painting techniques, David combines both. The detail of photography and the qualities of painting to create unique and beautiful landscape photographs.