Skip to main content

Image Review: The “Thinking Man”

Lesson 32 from: Mastering the Art of Photography

Chris Weston

Image Review: The “Thinking Man”

Lesson 32 from: Mastering the Art of Photography

Chris Weston

trending photo & video

buy this class

$00

$00
Sale Ends Soon!

starting under

$13/month*

Unlock this classplus 2200+ more >

Lesson Info

32. Image Review: The “Thinking Man”

Chris reveals how to use depth-of-field to improve a portrait of an orang-utan.

Lessons

Class Trailer
1

Class Introduction - Three Steps To Creative Photography

03:48
2

Firing The Creative Mind - Part 1: The Camera Points Both Ways

03:10
3

Firing The Creative Mind - Part 2: Letting Go Of Judgement

06:53
4

Firing The Creative Mind - Part 3: Detaching From Outcomes

04:12
5

Practicing Mindfulness In Photography

02:43
6

Finding The Visual Narrative

02:39
7

Behind-the-scenes: Naples

07:52
8

Seeing Beneath The Surface Of Things

02:30

Lesson Info

Image Review: The “Thinking Man”

orangutan to one of my favourite animals. I've often thought if you could ever socialist with great apes with a gorilla, you play chess with an orangutan, you go down the pub for a pint of beer. This is a nice study, and the photographer Traven role has titled it The Thinking Man. And I can see why the pose and the expression say it all with sharp focus and a really nice exposure, even capturing detail in those heavily hooded eyes, which isn't always easy. And there's a lovely texture in the face now I did wonder whether a square crop might suit this image to really draw attention to that face, which is the story here, but I'm not convinced, so I'll put that down to personal preference. But there is one element in this composition that's distracting to me, and that's the spiky crown sprouting from behind the orangutans head. Now it could be argued that it provides background interest, but that's not the story here. The story is the thinking man, so it's all about the ape. So while it w...

ouldn't have been possible to achieve what I'm about to do in camera, because there's not enough distance between the orangutan and the plant behind. I've had a quick play in photo shop just to reiterate the power of Blur to create emphasis. As I explained in less than two of Module five in this, let's say, roughly processed image. I've used a master artificially blur the background and notice how much more powerful than narrative becomes without those background distractions. Blur or depth of field is a fantastic compositional, tall in visual storytelling. As you can see here, it's a nice shot driving and a great image title.

Ratings and Reviews

Gary Hook
 

Wow, what a wonderful journey. I love the concept of telling a story with one's photos and as I go through past images, I'm seeing them in a much different perspective. That's the good news, The bad? The lost opportunities I never 'saw' before; however that is a good thing. There is so much to internalize with the material so that it can get out of the head and into the 'heart'. I also found the concept really helps me with composition, both in camera and post. Biggest take away, as Chris underscored in his closing, is to slooooow down, take the time and feel it. Don't be so quick to leave one scene as there remain other aspects, yet to be discovered. A great experience that I truly enjoyed Thank you

Glenda
 

I loved this course - in particular the latter part of it in which he demonstrated how post processing lets you really tell the story of the image. Another fabulous course. Thanks Chris & thanks Creative Live.

Abdullah Alahmari
 

Thanks a lot to mr. Chris Weston This course is great and It is a 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 course for me. Beside the other course ( mastering photographic composition and visual storytelling) both courses are Complementing to each other and highly recommended.

Student Work

RELATED ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES