WORKOUT SESSION: WHEN TOO MUCH IS NOT ENOUGH
Rarely a week goes by without another coined word being added to the English Mirriam-Webster lexicon. Only this year we've learned zika, pokemoning, cancerversary, and facedesk. Then there's man-bun, culturati, and lamestream. And last week another hit the interwaves - one so good that we cannot not use it for our own nefarious photographic ends.
It's "over-exaggeration."
Not just exaggeration, mind you, but the next level, a step higher than high, the lofty peak upon which the Fool on the Hill holds court.
You may already recognize it as the term Ryan Lochte, of Olympic infamy, used in place of what was formerly known as a baldfaced lie - or if we are being generous, a wild fish story. But no, he specifically tagged his robbed-with-gun-to-the-head tale as an "over-exaggeration" - and that has serious potential for us!
Translated to photospeak, this means we get to crank dials and wheels and levers and sliders all the way to eleven - and beyond - in our quest for garish, outlandish, fantastic, impossible-to-believe, way-out-of-the-box, socially unacceptable, technically inept, just-plain-wrong, overbearing, pretentious, cartoonish, and here's-mud-in-your-eye photographs - and get away with it! In other words, we won't care about our carefully designed artistic education - if we want to over-oversaturate, under-underexpose, un-unstraighten, cross-crossprocess, tran-transform, de-denoise, dis-distort, or encourage a feral cat with a fresh-caught de-feathered cherub in its mouth to prance across the keyboard while we're processing, no one, not even Matt Lauer, can stop us. No apologies!
There's a positive point to this exercise, believe it or not. It's simply this - if, or more likely, when you find yourself stuck in a rut or in a "should and shouldn't" frame of mind, some over-the-top play time is just what the doctor ordered. Push those sliders too far, lower a shutter speed beyond anything reasonable, shoot with no concern of what anyone might think. In a couple weeks we'll break out the brooms and dustpans and clean up after ourselves, but for now, kick out the jams, get your freak on, tell fish stories, and over-exaggerate!
When exactly is too much not enough? That's up to you to show us.
Some fuses for TOO MUCH IS NOT ENOUGH:
TOO MUCH IS NOT ENOUGH will run for two weeks, from August 24 through September 6. Happy shooting!
Keywords:
aperture,
art,
assignment,
camera,
composition,
creativity,
exercise,
exposure,
light,
photography,
picture,
shutter,
training
Comments
No comments posted.
Loading...
|
© Arrowrock Photography