I enjoy the videos Alex produces. He’s thoughtful and reflective.
His YouTube channel is called The Photographic Eye and that’s really his focus – as he says ‘the art of photography is the art of seeing’. He does this by profiling the work of some of the greats but also draws on his own experience of thirty years as a professional photographer.
Check him out:
One of the takeaways I got from this particular video was to try and look at the familiar with new eyes, as Alex urges – ‘with childhood wonder‘ so that home surroundings, those streets you walk down every day, still provide opportunities if you train yourself to look at them differently. To look and interpret them in your way and by doing so create a style that is unique to you.
I’m a way off being able to do this confidently as I’m in the early stages of developing my skills as a photographer but I value the words of Alex and people like him. It’s not about the gear, it’s about seeing – really seeing. I have a sister who has always wanted to paint and is doing various online classes. She tells me the tutors feed back she needs to free herself of self-imposed constraints that prevent her from producing the work she aspires to do. I think there is a parallel with my photography journey – training the eye to observe beyond the obvious doesn’t come easy but knowing that red pepper sat on the kitchen top is so much more than a vegetable certainly is a great starting point!
