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This was a week of revelation. I have been watching the series of videos from my Kelby Training subscription with the famous New York Photographer, Jay Maisel. They were absolutely fantastic!

Jay Maisel is a man who has a very direct approach to photography. Essentially, he doesn’t believe in letting anything get in the way of the shot. This means he uses his camera set at ISO 1600 most of the time. The higher ISO allows him to achieve the fastest possible shutter speeds in Aperture Priority mode. He also shoots bracketed exposures, then decides which looks best.

While his technical ideology is uncomplicated and interesting, the real education comes from Jay imparting his observations and insights about photography as an art. These are the snippets of wisdom I appreciated most…

“There is nothing neutral in your photograph. Everything in the image is either working for you or against you”

Jay believes that the part in the centre of the image is what attracts the photographer first, therefor you don’t need to think about it – it will take care of itself. What you need to be mindful of are the other parts of your frame, check the edges, check everything – “if it looks crap in the viewfinder it’s not going to look any better on the computer” (his words).

“Photography is not replication, but revelation”

Showing people something they’ve not seen before is what makes a photograph more interesting to the non-photographer.

“The hardest part about going out to shoot is not to plan”

Going out with a preconception of what you’d like to shoot is limiting… but most of the time I’m wondering what the hell I’m going to take a photo of, so this isn’t an issue for me most of the time. I thought it was smart though.

“If you are out there shooting, things will happen for you. If you’re not out there, you’ll only hear about it”

The part I have to remember most with this 365 challenge :)