Minimalism Photography - [5 TIPS and an assignment!]

Let's go minimalistic and clean all the distracting elements from our images. Five tips about minimalistic images coming up [Music] Hi there my name is Peter Forsgard I am a professional photographer from Helsinki Finland and before we start talking minimalistic images please consider subscribing to my channel and hit that bell so you get notified when there is a new video online. My channel is all about you getting to be a better photographer and usually about Olympus gear but this time about minimalistic images minimalism is a art form that started in 1960s in new york some claim that it was already started in 1950s in photography. What it actually means is that artists move towards more geographical and simple images "less is more" is most likely the shortest and more minimalistic yes pun intended explanation what minimalistic photography is less is more and let's first start to talk about the subject matter. Does it matter what the subject is? Usually no, unless you have a lots of lots of subjects in your images so making minimalistic images is kind of like concentrating on one subject on your image and it can also be more abstract kind of feeling and that usually defines what a minimalistic images are very many times I see images that are too crowded they're too busy. The minimalistic approach is totally different you try to make the image really calm and concentrate on one thing and as we will talk about about and as we will talk about composition later in this video you will see how to do that how to isolate your subject from all the clutter and busy things around it crop in it is usually easier to isolate your subject and make it your main subject is to crop in and of course you can do that in post or I would prefer if it's possible try to do it when photographing then you have kind of a more thoughtful way of making the image and you you're already concentrating on what you want because it usually it is a good thing to think about what are you what are your intentions and what the image will look when you're making the image it helps a lot in post-production it will reduce the post-production time of course unless you are really into post-production then it's a different thing and then you get better images if you have to decide afterwards that okay i want to make a minimalistic image it's most likely it's not as good as it would have been when uh photographing and I mean post-production is not cropping of course you can crop a bit but moving distracting elements try to do that while photographing when you're making the composition or if there are some stuff that can be moved away do it unless it's a documentary if that's a different thing but usually minimalistic images are not meant to be documentaries in that sense it's more of an art form in my opinion but of course you can be a minimalistic documentary photographer too if you like that's not it's not you know a part of a genre as we will speak a bit later too about about the genres and when you cropping in when photographing usually longer lenses makes that a lot easier so when you're doing minimalistic photography a bit longer lens is a better choice of course it's not dependent on the lens it doesn't like minimalistic photograph is not defined by the lenses it was used it's of course it's about the what the image looks like but it's easier uh with the longer telephoto or is a short telephoto rather than a really wide angle lens but it's just easier to to make the minimalistic image with with longer lenses and mention the lenses reminds me of one thing we can also consider minimalistic photography so that you are reducing yourself or limiting yourself to only one lens and one camera that could be called minimalistic also but then it doesn't mean that the images are minimalistic your approach to photography uh what comes to gear is minimalistic and that's also but that's not the point of this video we're talking about the images that you produce which we can have tons and tons of lenses but the images can be very minimalistic if you want use longer shutter speeds then one thing to isolate your subject is to lose to use long shutter speeds let's say you have a seascape where you're photographing the sea and there's a lot of wind that image if you take it with the sharp with the fast shutter speed might not be a minimalistic image even though there isn't very many things but the freezed water can be a bit distracting but using a long shutter speed it makes totally smooth and emphasizes the minimalistic feeling of the image so that's long shutter speeds for minimalistic images is one way of isolating and also if you're in a crowded place and you have the possibility to have a long shutter speed and there are a lot of people around just having a long shutter speed will make those people go away the place look totally empty of course it's really hard to to uh do it right now so here is an image from past where i did this as you can see there are some small traces of people like you see here and this method also works with travel shots if you want to take an image of a famous place and you want to actually see what it is then just have a longer shutter speed and you will get rid of the crowd doesn't mean that the image will be simplistic or minimalistic but it's a way of getting rid of big crowds when we're talking about shutter speeds which are times also the time of day when minimalistic images are easy to make are early mornings and and later at night which is usually also the best time to photograph because of the light is a lot better than during middle of the day when it's very harsh when the sun is high up and really strong but when it comes from a lower angle everything will look smoother and this sun light is a lot softer which which is more pleasing in many ways so it's a good thing to go early morning and later at night to get some simple and minimalistic images of course you can do it in other times but you get two things better light and less crowds and distracting elements during early mornings and late at night shallow depth of field is also a very good way of hiding distracting elements from the background so using wide aperture is also a way of making minimalistic images fourth thing negative space using negative space is very effective because then you're isolating your subject having your subject quite small and a lot of empty space around it and this can also be applied with any genre and i think this is one of the most interesting way of making composition and i actually have a video about negative space you can watch it from there it's an old video but there are a lot of good tips about negative space because it is a very powerful way of making composition and if you haven't used that method i sincerely hope that you will because that that will open up some new ways of looking the world and the images after the fifth tip i will show you some images and talk through them and explain why the images that i dig up dig out from my archives are minimalistic or maybe not and number five simple geometrical objects and this is the core of minimalistic approach to visual art and image making because this is the core that the whole kind of art movement or art form was uh formed concentrating on simple geometrical shapes so finding those can be a very good approach to minimalistic photography and that's also as i was talking about the lenses it is very good to have a longer lens to isolate different things different shapes different forms different uh objects in the scene and that's why the long lens as i already said is quite good for this finding geometrical objects and forms is a powerful way of making minimalistic images and also it is as i said the core of the whole form and before we look at those images one more thing as i was saying about the genres remember that minimalistic photography is not restricted to any genre it's all about what the image looks like like it's not restricted to any lenses but only about what the image looks like what's what's inside the frame that you capture and it's time to look at some images i've selected a few images that some are minimalistic and some might not be but you can of course argue about any of those images and please let me know in the comments down below if you disagree with me but let's start with this image first i wouldn't say that this is a minimalistic image even though it doesn't have that much in it there is a bird and an island but if we take the bird out then we have a minimalistic image then these two images that was photographed early in the morning when there was a fog and as you can see the fog kind of makes the background and all the distracting elements disappear so fog is a good time or when there is fog it's a good time to make some minimalistic images it will hide a lot of things and then the use of negative space as i said is very powerful way of making minimalistic images and usually portraiture is might not be called minimalistic but this environmental portrait is quite minimalistic and then of course these camels also it's a very minimalistic image even though there are lots of camels not lot but a few camels walking in the desert then we have this image with some ice in the front and even though this doesn't really have that much it's still not a minimalistic image in my opinion it's a bit distracting all the eyes that is in the front there are a lot of details and a lot of structures in this even though it is quite simple image but not minimalistic in that sense if we really think very strict way of what minimalism is then this image is not then we have these two images both in my opinion are minimalistic images even though the one with with the people could be argued that it's not other too many subject so that this image could be considered as a minimalistic image but the other one actually is and it's in Yemen this um sunset it's photographed from the Emirates towards Yemen it's right at the border so it's Yemen the village down there but yes that's beside the point it is a minimalistic image in my opinion then we have this black and white image of this bench this was also made in a bit of a fog so that you can see what's behind there and of course a bit overexposed and then turned into black and white to get distracting colors to the minimum so we only have black and white and all the gray shades of course that's also a good way lowering the saturation of your image to get more minimalistic approach to your photography but if you disagree of anything about my images then please let me know in the comments down below and then the assignment send me an image that is minimalistic try to follow the things that i said or maybe you will not try something else maybe i missed something and i will give feedback to your image on my next video which is going to be a live stream all the instructions can be found in the description of this video down below and i think if you have the chance to make the image after we've seen this video that'd be great but of course i know it's not always possible and if you have a good image that is minimalistic please send it to me but do not send an image that has already been awarded somewhere or or try to find something that you want really the feedback for that image and unfortunately like always i cannot most likely give feedback to all the images i will restrict the amount about to 30. but remember those 30 images have been quite good in the past live streams so the the bar is quite high but this is not to kind of say that do not send your image is not good enough i don't believe that because it most likely will be good enough so please send that image to me and the instructions in the description below and here is the video about negative space you might want to watch that next but hey thanks for watching and bye for now

Channel: Peter Forsgård

Views: 34,460

Keywords: photography, Olympus, Olympus Visionary, minimalist photography, Minimalist Photography - [5 TIPS and an assignment!], minimalist photography ideas, minimalist photography tutorial, minimalist landscape photography, minimalist photos, photography tips, landscape photography, landscape photography tips, landscape photography tutorial, minimal photography, minimalism photography, negative space, photo tutorial, minimalism

Id: EBsEkR3I1O8

Length: 13min 44sec (824 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 12 2021