Monday, November 14, 2005

Playing by the rules

One of the motivations of this blog is to start experimenting with the creative ideas contained within the series of books by Freeman Patterson. However, I really see those books as a jumping off point, and not a strict set of guidelines to be followed, or recipe to be repeated. One of the most immediate differences is that the books deal with the concepts as relating to film, yet I'm almost exclusively using digital. This acts as a motivation to just use the books for inspiration, straight away - which I think is a great advantage. The key is to follow the patterns laid out in the books and use those as a guide towards interesting ways of expressing ideas and emotions in my images. There's a lot to be learned from serendipitous mistakes.

2 comments:

John M. Setzler, Jr. said...

Excellent post...

I agree completely. I don't have my books yet (they should be here Thursday), but I believe that there may be a good bit of time being spent on replicating the film techniques of multiple exposures, which may not be as worthwhile as experimenting with stacking digital exposures...

ursula said...

I agree also. Actually, I think all of Patterson's materials are intended for exactly this purpose: as a jump of point, not a set of guidelines.

For myself it works to start out by trying to replicate things, see where that leads you, then come up with original ideas (or happy mistakes). Or maybe not so happy mistakes as in my current entry to Triptych :(