Artists benefit when they break away from routine and challenge themselves. U.K.-based street photographer Craig Whitehead teaches that creative stretches are similar to warming up before an athletic event. In this excerpt from Whitehead’s book, “Find Your Frame: A Street Photography Masterclass,” he writes about how taking warm-up photos works similarly to the way Canadian architect Frank Gehry sparks ideas for his iconic designs by free-form sketching.
Gehry’s line drawings have dual benefits. On the one hand, they open him up to the possibility of happy accidents and this is probably how he came up with some of his best ideas. But they also avoid the blank canvas feeling that many creatives get. “Blank canvas” might seem an odd reference for a photographer when the world is out there offering itself up to be recorded, but we can undergo something similar. Luckily, we’re living in the digital age, so we can take thousands of pictures at relatively little cost …
So, crack on. If you shoot a dud picture, it’s no loss, you can just review it, delete it, and retake it … Think of yourself as a runner about to hit the track for the 100m final or an actor about to go on stage in the finale of a sold-out run. These test shots are your star jumps and stretches or your blocking and vocal exercises. I did the same thing when I was studying illustration—I’d just start making marks on paper. Sometimes it’s good to set yourself a challenge. Like drawing with your non-dominant hand, you could start shooting with your aperture wide open. This all helps your brain to get into the right mode to take great pictures—it would be foolish to go straight into it. …
If I’m walking around a scene that I’ve seen many times, on a street I go down every day, it can be hard to lift a camera to shoot something unless it is completely out of the ordinary. My standards have been raised so high that if something’s not spectacular, I don’t even shoot it. Take it from me that this is a terrible habit and one that goes against my own advice! I sometimes need to remind myself to loosen up and keep experimenting … You always want to keep pushing yourself to make better work than you’ve made in the past.
Excerpted with permission from “Find Your Frame: A Street Photography Masterclass” (Frances Lincoln, an imprint of The Quarto Group) by Craig Whitehead.
