Lesson Info
4. Learn to See Visual Clutter
Lessons
Introduction
01:41 2Minimalism - A Few Words to Start
01:31 3The Power of Negative Space
12:08 4Learn to See Visual Clutter
08:40 5Isolating Your Anchor
05:47 6Composing for Better Minimalist Photographs
09:27 7Choosing Gear to Create Minimalist Photographs
13:16 8Black and White the Classic Approach
08:41Working With Color
09:06 10Location Session - Apex Beach
11:50 11Apex Beach - Wrap Up
02:24 12Timing and Weather
08:24 13Common Traps and How to Avoid Them
10:29 14Post-Processing - When I Use it and Why?
17:41 15Print Your Work and Harness the Power of Minimalism
02:13 16Three Easy Exercises to Kick Start Your Journey into Minimalism
02:55 17Location Session - Sled Dog Portrait
04:05 18Sled Dog Portrait Image Review
07:34 19Sled Dog Portrait Key Takeaway
03:33 20Location Session - Arctic Drone Flight
05:14 21Arctic Drone Flight Image Review
06:36 22Arctic Drone Flight Key Takeaways
03:31 23Snowkiting In the Canadian Arctic - Location Session
06:07 24Snowkiting Image Review
08:32 25Snowkiting Key Takeaways
02:52 26Summary
03:08 27Wrap-up
01:18Lesson Info
Learn to See Visual Clutter
mm. Learning to see. Visual clutter is another very important concept in creating minimal images, removing distractions and simplifying your frame is going to bring that subject to the forefront by learning to see the clutter and the distractions. You're gonna be able to start extracting it and getting it out of your frame. When I speak about clutter, I'm talking about fences, cars, people, telephone poles, color itself various and opposing textures. Anything that jars the fewer out of your frame and takes them away from your backdrop and your subject. Many objects make great minimalist subjects. So it's more important to concentrate on that space that surrounds the subject and making sure it's free of distractions. Let's look into some examples of what I mean by visual clutter and how to remove it from our frames. And I got a few sample shots here with all similar subjects and how I went about cleaning up the frame and then eventually honing in on that one subject with very few or no ...
distractions. Our first image here is of two first seals in Antarctica. This was just after landing. We had just got out of the zodiacs and we were kind of roaming around and exploring a bit. It's not instantly obvious what it is. I want you to look at when you're looking at this photo. I've got, you know, a person up on the top left here, on the ridge line, there's some icebergs in the far background, there's like a lump on a rock and that's actually one for seal on the left side. And then there's another dark lump on a rock to the right side. That's another first hell! So it is a photo of two for sales in Antarctica, but it certainly isn't clean and it's not obvious what it is I want you to look at. So we're gonna start removing some of those distractions. I'm gonna show you what I was doing. I was moving around, I was changed perspective using different kinds of gear, like playing with wide angle and telephoto and really trying to clean this thing up. So here's the second image and you can see that already, it's much cleaner. I've gotten rid of a lot of the distractions in the first one. You know, there are no exposed rock. The human is out of the picture. So our eyes are drawn there because like I was saying that human element takes a lot of weight just automatically for us. There still is some interest going on in the background. We've got a bird up in the top here, We've got that nice iceberg in the distance and it's not a bad image at all. It's clean, but as far as stripping it down and getting to the basics and the essence of this image, which is to fur seals in Antarctica. I think we still have a little ways to go. Here. We are now getting even closer to that idea, it's much more obvious that I have to first deal side by side. You know, there's not much going on in the foreground and not that much going on in the background anymore, There is still some detail there. So this, you know what, This is a really clean image. I still don't know if I would categorize it as minimal. Um, and even maybe the final image, I'm gonna show you wouldn't be for some people what they would consider to be a minimalist image, but it's certainly going to be a lot cleaner and a lot more minimal than this one. And that's this, This is the final image. So for this, I got really low, I used a very wide aperture so I could blur out that foreground and the background. I made sure I shot against almost a clean, perfectly stark white snow bank. So there really is no distraction in the background, very limited amount in the foreground, basically just enough to give you a sense of depth. So it's not super flat. And then your eye goes instantly to this first fur seal who's posing quite nicely for us. And that perfect sort of opposing angle of the second fur seal that really pairs well with the with the first having them basically branch out opposite of each other like that compared to our first image when we first hit shore. This is much much cleaner and much more minimal. Here's another example of removing clutter, recognizing visual clutter and distraction. So we this is Mongolia, this is in the Gobi desert, the singing sand dunes or the Hunger and L sand dunes and in the South Gobi. When you first arrive here, it's this beautiful oasis of sort of a lush green valley with hundreds of horses and camels and flowers and there's a little river that runs through and then these beautiful, like massive, never ending sand dunes. It's one of my favorite places on the planet. But when you first get out it's a little overwhelming. There's so much visually to take in. You don't really know what it is, you want to focus on what it is you want to shoot. Were there doing a workshop and guiding a workshop and I wanted to take a picture of one of our participants, kind of walking into the dunes and going off on that voyage of Discovery to find his or her, shot her one shot of the of the sand dunes. I instantly after recognizing my subject, which was going to be a person, I started trying to frame that subject and using the dunes to kind of tell that story. Second shot has less clutter less distraction. You know, the person is a little more obvious. I still don't know what it is, but birds keep flying into my frame and you do have a very clean backdrop with those dunes. There is some texture. Uh and the grass has has a lot of details. So it's not, it's not great, but it is less cluttered than the first. And then I played around with using the telephoto lens, so only really cropping in on just the participant in their camera. There's a little bit of distraction in the foreground with the flowers, but I didn't really get the sense of story here about them going into the dunes and exploring. So I pulled back again and I set them against the clean dunes. It's much, much cleaner on the top half, still somewhat distracting in the bottom half. It's easier to identify what I want you to look at, which is that person. But I still have a ways to go. And then here's the final image and we've got them going in. It's a slightly different time of day. So here's an example of waiting for a better time of day as well for like more interesting light to really emphasize those patterns and those shapes, creating a lot of space in the sky. And then having our key element, which is the human taking a ton of the focus and the weight in this image, right at the very bottom. But he's clean and he's sharp. That silhouette is perfect in my opinion. Um and this is a much cleaner, much more minimal, stripped down version of any of these at the beginning. Another example with puffins on the east coast of Newfoundland and Canada, you show up at this place um in El Liston, this tiny community, it's a beautiful spot. It's a great location to watch puffins or to photograph puffins. And when you first walk out there, it's basically this, it's just a mess of birds on a slightly off shore island. They're everywhere. It's a matter of starting to see all that clutter the clutter being mostly the birds at this point and trying to extract just a single bird or two from that flock of that mess and really hone in on them. Quite often. It's easier to wait for them to come to shore and kind of like just sit on land and, and they're quite calm and engaging and they don't really mind people that much, as long as you're respectful and keep your distance. So I was using a zoom lens here, but you know the puffins just relaxing and doing its thing. So I decided to get low again kind of frame them against a clean sky and remove the distraction of anything else that was going on clouds or other birds. It does start to help eliminate some of the distraction on the land with the grass as well, but they're still in the mid ground there toward the bird. All those little flowers and other grasses is distracting. So I started to try to play with positioning um putting them against darker backgrounds, shooting past all that grass with a with a wide open aperture again and eventually got to this one which is very, very stripped down again, It's clean and it's simple, it's the puffin against the sky and that's it. It's a story about colour and expression and there's nothing really to distract you hear from what I want you to see which is the puffin. And then eventually I worked that scene even more so and got what I feel is like a very strong portrait of a puffin and he's just against like a piece of like an outcropping of rock, basically. And the light was hitting him very beautifully. Used the 72 200 waiting for my moment. And there's nothing going on in this image except that puffin and his expression, he just looks so academic and beautiful and yeah, I just think that there's a really clean, simple image, not as minimal as this image, but in my opinion, is still a nice clean image. And my my preferred image of the series from that day. So it's not always that the minimal image is gonna be, or the most minimal image is gonna be the most interesting, either or the one that you prefer.
Ratings and Reviews
user-3b9448
This is a brilliant course which I can highly recommend. I have done some Minimalist photography but still found the lessons very interesting. I enjoyed the discussion on colour vs. B&W. My favourite part was to learn how long it takes to plan a shoot, wait for the right conditions, even change the subject if the initial idea doesn't work and see the other images taken during the shoot before (or after) the final image. The presentation is excellent - love the cat :-).
Deb Williams
Great class, good length and easy to follow along. A fantastic way to challenge yourself to look at composition differently and a course full of useful tips to try out.
Bradley Wari
Great Job! Great course! loved the bloopers, had a few laughs. I really enjoyed how he showed a little of how he worked the scene of a few of his images. showing multiple images and how he got to THE shot.
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