Improving your photography through recognition.

After a weekend of rest and relaxation, I collected this set of portfolio images that range from weddings to commercial property to documentary images and child photography, portraits, etc. Really, the way I collected them was to pull out my iPad and open up Lightroom CC (what used to be called Lightroom Mobile) and scanning through various collections of images and selecting anything that stood out to me as great. I hope you see them that way. Each of these images struck me fairly hard, so that is why you are seeing them now.

I take great pride in a successful composition, a beautifully lit image, and a well-told story. Sometimes the images are successful at all three of these things. But when we are honest with ourselves, our images often lack in one or two categories. But looking through our own images and selecting portfolio groups and asking the hard questions about composition, lighting, and narrative is what improves us. Too many people think that you improve as a photographer by getting out and photographing… that’s a bit of “cart before the horse” thinking. Improving your photography is more about improving the way you see and the way you think about what you see that it is about the technical understanding of the camera. Now, I love great craft, but if a perfect exposure was what determined great photography, we would all be amazing photographers in the next five years as cameras get more and more intelligent. Focus and exposure will be so perfectly automatic in the next decade that you won’t have to think much to get a technically perfect photo. All of these technically perfect images will still lack the basics: composition, lighting, and story. These are the things you have to learn to find or create and the first step to finding and creating anything is learning to recognize what you are looking for.

Because of this need to constantly improve, I am constantly looking at my portfolio of images and selecting new images. This 30 Days Project has helped me do this even more often and I am glad of that. This is just the latest installment of my portfolio of images over the years. It is by no means a complete or exhaustive portfolio. In fact, I plan on posting a number of these over the next few weeks. This portfolio slideshow is accompanied by the music of Hive Riot with their song, “So I Dance.” Their music is some of my favorite music of all time, and lucky me, it is on Triple Scoop Music so I can license their songs for any project I make. Especially with Triple Scoop Music’s new subscription-based services which allows me to download as many songs as I need for my projects. Choosing a song for me is a very big deal. I often see images and know what song needs to go with them? Other times, I hear a song and know which images I would like to use to connect with the music. In that way, this is a collaborative effort. I make the images, Monday Gledhill and Hive Riot make the songs.

This slideshow was made with Adobe Clip and directly uploaded to Vimeo for distribution. Clip is such a simple way to make slideshows and can be done from your iPad or Smart Phone in just a few short minutes. I can’t say enough good things about Adobe Clip. It even has a few songs for simple projects, but the number is seriously small and they aren’t that great. That’s another reason to use Triple Scoop Music’s subscription service. No matter what program I use to make my videos, I have all the music I could ever want, ready to use anytime I need it. And that is very useful now as I am making 30 Videos in 30 Days…

Learn more at www.triplescoopmusic.com. Music in this video licensed through www.triplescoopmusic.com.

The music for this slideshow is by Hive Riot and can be found on Triple Scoop Music.

Unlimited music licensing plans are normally $995 per year and up. However, right now, for a limited time, there is special pricing! Get yours for just $499 per year (annual billing) or $49 per month when you sign up this month. If you only use one new song each month, you will save $221 this year. At those prices, I will save $1,301 this month alone! That’s pretty amazing. Choose all the music you need all year long. Choose from over 35,000 hand-picked songs and soundtracks. Click here to learn more: www.triplescoopmusic.com

Use the code “JAREDPLATT18” and save an extra 10% on your music membership!

You can follow this project here, or on my blog at www.jaredplatt.com/blog. If you are a Vimeo fan, you can watch this project unfold at my Vimeo Album: https://vimeo.com/album/5227999

For a complete list of my equipment, you can go to B&H Photo Video. https://bhpho.to/2Kx88bl

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