Lessons
Minimalism - A Few Words to Start
00:43 2The Power of Negative Space
06:01 3Learn to See Visual Clutter
03:03 4Isolating Your Anchor
03:02 5Composing for Better Minimalist Photographs
03:57 6Choosing Gear to Create Minimalist Photographs
03:22 7Black and White the Classic Approach
03:38 8Working With Color
02:47Location Session - Apex Beach
04:54 10Apex Beach - Wrap Up
02:20 11Timing and Weather
00:44 12Common Traps and How to Avoid Them
07:08 13Post-Processing - When I Use it and Why?
14:19 14Print Your Work and Harness the Power of Minimalism
02:05 15Sled Dog Portrait Image Review
04:18 16Sled Dog Portrait Key Takeaway
02:43 17Location Session - Arctic Drone Flight
01:38 18Arctic Drone Flight Image Review
05:59 19Arctic Drone Flight Key Takeaways
02:10 20Snowkiting In the Canadian Arctic - Location Session
01:35 21Snowkiting Image Review
05:58 22Snowkiting Key Takeaway
02:27 23Class Summary
03:03Lesson Info
Snowkiting Key Takeaway
So here are the key takeaways from this little trip outside with the kite's number one, negative space, negative space was huge. It's probably what I relied on the most for that shot of boomer jumping the snow machine, including all that visual sort of mass clean, clean, clean space and it really helps sell the scale. It really helped calm things down and created that classic calming sort of energy you'd expect from a minimalist shot, but it was of a subject that's usually seen or depicted as high energy, high adventure. So I liked that juxtaposition and I think that that negative space has had a lot to do with that. The second thing I wanted to mention was limiting the visual clutter. We went on a day that was snowing and just had recently snowed the day before as well. So we had a really clean blanket in the canvas to work from on top of that. I decided to place them against a big skyline that I knew they would appear sharp and clean and pop off of. And the third thing I used a telep...
hoto lens to shoot past just any other potential distractions in the snow, places that were a little bit left bare or rock outcroppings or other creators or snowmobiles and things like that. So those three things really helped limit the amount of visual distractions in the frame. And then the last thing I wanted to mention was just using black and white in place of color. These shots in my mind, we're always going to be black and white and the day we went out was overcast and snowing. So it lends itself really well to that conversion. I wanted to portray this idea, this clean aesthetic of minimalism combined with the power and sort of the grace of chi Ting as a sport. And so black and white was a really great way of doing that. Also, I hadn't seen this kind of fighting shot done in black and white or in this sort of clean, minimalist way before. So that was also another factor. I wanted to see if I can create an image or a series of images that portrayed chi ting in a classic way. So that's it for the snow kiting. I hope you guys enjoyed that. I hope there was something in their value and maybe some of you will decide to try out snow kiting or water fighting or land fighting at some point in the future.
Ratings and Reviews
Brittany Riggs
Lovely and information. The information was relevant and ended up helping a good bit.
Vincent Zuck
Very interesting class, in a very unusual location (Arctic), which blended together to give a top notch class. I learned a lot about Minimalism as applied to photography, and Minimalism as applied to post-processing. Curtis is engaging while teaching and demonstrating on site, or back in his "office". I really enjoyed this class. Thank you Curtis.
Kate Geary
Student Work
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