Thoughts & Ideas on Creative Critique-Live, Plus Replays!
The first two Creative Critique-Live webinars have been very enjoyable, and I’m extremely grateful for the opportunity to share ideas that I hope are useful and beneficial. I also hope these webinars help ease the difficult situation we’re in due to isolation because of the coronavirus.
For now I am hosting these free webinars weekly and alternating the start times to accommodate attendees in different time zones. The next webinar will be this coming Thursday, April 16th, at 8 pm EDT.
If you haven’t registered, you can register here.
Thoughts and Ideas
I’ve received lots of positive feedback on the webinars, as well as comments about how to improve which is always helpful. The hardware and software setup needed to live stream can be tricky to manage, so it’s been a steep learning curve, but slowly I’m working out the kinks.
Once I have a stable system, I’ll share my setup for those who are curious and want to do their own live streams/webinars. That is a whole separate topic on its own!
As I mentioned in the last webinar, I want to open each one with a short discussion about a specific topic I think is worth sharing, followed by the image critiques. I do all the critiques “on the fly” so to speak, as I’m not analyzing the images beforehand to any great extent. This means my feedback and ideas about developing the image in Lightroom have to sound convincing, and that can only happen if I am deeply confident about the principles I am using, which I am.
These principles are what I want to share over the coming weeks as they form the foundation of my creative work, whether as a photographer or painter. They are based on traditional art theory about composition and design, as well as neuroscience—essentially how we see with our eyes and our brain. My goal is to communicate with as many people as possible through the visual medium, both in a visual and more importantly, emotional level. I want to help you say something meaningful with your images, which is far more interesting than simply documenting the scene.
I’m all for thinking outside the box, but as Twyla Tharp reminds us, to do that you first need to have a box. Picasso mastered traditional drawing and painting techniques before he innovated, and the latter could not have happened without the former.
Please share your thoughts, ideas, and questions so I can improve—feedback is the only way for that to happen.