Simply Follow Seth Godin's Advice...

i would like to help you reach a wider audience with your photography to stop people just scrolling past when they see one of your photographs if this appeals to you then this is the advice you need to hear how is it how is it you know every single day there are 95 95 million photos uploaded and that's just instagram you know we know people's attention spans are becoming shorter and shorter so how do you catch this viewer's eye that's so that your photography has the time to then connect to the viewer for your images to have the ability to speak their story even though i am a firm believer that one should photograph for oneself first and foremost there are times and there are places when you really want to attract people's attention to your photography and the advice that i'm going to share with you now is going to help to motivate you to make sure that you know how to arrest people's gaze is not based around any weird hacks or fancy websites or any of that stuff but around a cow and the color purple seth godin is recognized as one of the great marketing minds of the modern era and he recounts the story about when him and his family were traveling through france they were driving through the french countryside blah blah blah and they you know they saw this field of cows oh happy munching away on the grass looking very different to american cows you know and they commented they said wow look at these cows these cows are so wonderful they're beautiful i love being able to see them then a few minutes later they came across another field of happy contented council munching on on their grass and again they said the same thing look how wonderful this landscape is this is beautiful you know and then there was another field of cows and another field account and then in another field when you are on instagram or somewhere else looking at photographs you're going to end up with the same effect aren't you you're going to see one image you're going to go what that's amazing you know and then you see another one and you see another one and you see another and all these these landscapes and these portraits and these you know fancy technical effects and stuff all start to look quite samey that you're not really paying attention to them because they're they're they're not really any different to the photographs that you saw you know 10 15 100 images ago every now and again one of those images catches your attention if you go back to seth and his road trip of through fields of cows in france you know you were saying that you know much like the instagram story those cows just started to blow into one another but if one of the field of cows you know the farmer had come along and painted all his cows purple it would have smacked them out of their glazed stupor because those cows were not different they were completely at odds from what has been going on before this is what he called the purple cow effect and it's your job to make your photography a purple cow in other words you need to make your images remarkable it's always important to remember what the real goal is with your photography now ask you this question because it's going to shape how you approach these ideas how you incorporate them into your own photography purple cowlness is another way of just saying being remarkable really marketing speak this is about creating something that is so different that people talk about it you know it could be in its packaging or the way that it is used or the change or that it makes to people the way that it just approaches an old problem it does so in a way that is different so much so that people talk about it and that's what we want these people to do with your photography is to change the way that they interact with it to pull them out of that stupa and to get them to dig deeper into your images you know who was the first contemporary photographer to start shooting portraits on instagram with an exceptionally shallow depth of field you know these days if you go on instagram and you see these portraits they're not really remarkable because they are so commonplace but i'm sure that if you went back to the the dawn of instagram right then and you know and you had a portfolio of very shallow razor thin depth of field portraits and everybody would look into photographs because they were so different from what was going on before they were those purple cows in a field of portraits shot at f8 with you know sort of rembrandt lighting of course nowadays a picture that raised us in depths of field and no one really cares a great many photographers will go on instagram and they will simply copy what is popular thinking that that too will make their images popular but you are going to innovate rather than copy you know so your photographs are not going to be like everybody else is they're not going to be just another contribution to that homogenous blob of of sameness that you know floods our screens the great photographers of the past you know people like david bailey for example you know they were in an industry that was very set in his ways you know the fashion industry hadn't really changed very much it was a cecil beaton kind of approach and he probably could have carried on doing that kind of photography and had a fairly good career but he decided to do along with obviously other people at the time their own thing to move for to innovate rather than simply copy they saw the work of people like richard avedon and they went do you know what this is an idea that was worth taking and running with so take all these ideas that you see on the fringes that that crop up every now and again and expand on them those nuggets of inspiration that everybody else is missing when they are trying to chase what everybody else is doing a few years ago i entered the taylor westing portrait awards and i asked a friend of mine who'd been a finalist previously about some advice and i think this is advice that is absolutely absolutely worth sharing with you now he said you know the initial you know cull of images or the do all the photographs are put up on a wall in an art college in london and the panel judges walk around it and and doing pretty much a simple yes or no so you know that's three thousand seven element images that you sort of have to compete with this is not a time for the little substitutes this is not a time for those intricate little details that you often find photographers obsessing about say look at this look at this look at this thing if you need to point something out in a photograph then i think it's too too subtle so what you really you know what we kind of need to do is to make the idea as simple to understand as is possible so people can be hooked on it in an instant and then to give them substance so they stay looking at your image so your image starts become even more remarkable you don't do this by using trixie psychological effects and you know having just pretty girls and shadow depth of field in suggestive poses you do it by keeping that idea simple you think about what it is that you are trying to say with your photograph and you say that clearly we all feel very clever when we do lots of layering like alex webb you know and it's all very tricksy and it's all kind of cool and all we do you know photographs that involve deeper involvement so like a native kander portrait and you know and his very interesting you know sort of looks at you know celebrity but ultimately if the game that you're playing is trying to arrest people's attention in the first place so they will spend time looking you because let's face it you know we are not alex webb and we are not now of canada so we don't have names that will invite people to look at our photography we need to get people invested in your image as quickly as possible so that they can then you know find the subtleties that you are injecting into the photographs martin schuller's portraits i think are a great example of this you know they are simple they are bold and they are pretty different to what you would traditionally see on say a platform like instagram and in a in a quite clear sense they work fantastically well because instagram by its very nature is an environment where images are small so simple images bold images work better of course if you're not limited to just instagram then you don't have this restriction over the size of your images so you can have a little bit more of a nuance and subtlety to con communicate clearly what your photography is all about but don't over egg it don't think that the the depth of the image is what's going to attract people in think about it like a book a book has a title or you know film has a film poster these are the things that encourage you to look at the book to pick it up but it's the content that keeps you there watching or reading and it's the content that keeps you talking about the film or that book later on it can be a little bit tricky to get this concept about a purple cow and remarkableness so try this simple exercise go on to a place like unsplash you know someone that does stock photography and search for a a very generic thing like a sunset and you'll see all the pictures you know and you'll flick through them and after the first 10 or so they're all going to start looking very same you're going to start flicking them very quickly and then eventually one is going to catch your eye take that one image think about why that one caught your eye out of all the other ones why was that one specifically think about it for a little while and don't necessarily copy the idea and the concept and think well you can put that into your photography but but take the lessons that is teaching you that particular image and try and think about how they would apply to your own photography it is vital that you remember that you cannot please everybody when you make something for everybody then you please nobody your job is to marry this idea of creating content that has the ability to arrest the gaze of of the viewer but in a way that is unique to you because then your photographs start to have a lot more substance it is a great trap that a lot of photographers do where they just copy what's working you know if you think back to the taylor westing there's a story like you know one year a redhead won so the next year there are all redheads you know it's just a flood of redheads and then guess what a pair of twins who are redheads won the next year so what happens the year after there's loads of redheads and every set of twins in the uk was photographed with the express container being put into taylor westing so you can sort of see that that that while the phrase set success success breeds success it's the same thing in photography when something becomes popular everybody does it and pretty soon the very thing that made it popular ceases to be popular it becomes samey because everybody's doing it so rather than looking at the things that are popular now that stuff that is is getting loads of likes now go back in time you know like in fashion trends come and go there are many trends in photography that are worth exploring mining for their potential this is why it's such a good idea to look at the work of photographers from the past and also current photographers who are experimenting with revisiting trends from previous decades see if they knew those trends speak to you if you are inspired by those trends also think about the the environment where you display your photographs because that is going to change how you need to approach this so find a way of introducing something into your photography that can make your images remarkable when they are compared side by side with their contemporaries in their natural habitat i think it was paul hill who talked about lollipop photographs that the you know these images that are all style over substance and we see them and they only just last for a few seconds in our minds before you know tapering off and i am not suggesting that we all rush out and start creating lollipop images with just the sole intent of seeking and grabbing attention because that's one is one way of making a purple cow your intention as a photographer is to stand out amongst the crowd to to hold people's attention but then you deliver on something to give them something to hold on to to give them something to get their teeth into and this is what makes your images remarkable truly remarkable is that when you are able to marry those two then the viewer will just go do you know what you are the best photographer i love your images because they fulfill things within you and this is where you know ideas like compositions and storytelling and narrative air elements and visual devices come into play that they are letting your photography speak but you need to say hi you need to say look come and look at my images to begin with at some point during this video i'm sure that somebody has written in the comments and gone oh do you know what alex right um you always say you know photograph for yourself don't you know if other people like it then that's a bonus and and that's true you know i do believe that's only for my own photography but there are many of you guys you know who watch these videos who do want more recognition for your photography who would like to share it with with with a wider audience you know who maybe who would like to pursue a career in photography and this is kind of why i i felt that this is a subject that's worth talking about is because people tend to think that you know that getting awareness of your photography is about following a trend or being in the right place at the right time or you know all luck or something and there's probably little bits towards that but if you understand how people react to your photography about thinking that oh just because this photograph is great there's everybody must like it that there is unfortunately there's a little bit more to it than that and if you have these tools at your disposal if at least you can think about your photography in a different way then it gives you a better chance it gives you a better chance of reaching the audience who are going to connect with your remarkable photographs and seth godin uses that word a lot remarkable i want you to be a remarkable photographer don't just be average don't be not just don't be just the same as everybody else man this is this is not the place to be the same as everybody else this is the place to to be remarkable now go forth go and be remarkable and if you're worried about being remarkable if you're worried about you know the the hold that you know ah what happens if somebody doesn't like it then check this video out over here it really talks in depth about coming to terms with the the worry about being creative thanks again for watching and i'll see you again soon

Channel: The Photographic Eye

Views: 171,487

Keywords: Photography, photography education, photography ideas, photographer

Id: R0wp5eeX1U4

Length: 16min 12sec (972 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 23 2022