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MAB STUDIO

Professional Photography, Creative Portraits, and Multimedia Production

Let's Snap Together!

JOIN ME FOR MINI VIRTUAL PHOTO RETREATS

A NEW PHOTO CHALLENGE EVERY OTHER DAY!

I’d like to invite you to join me on an exploration. I’d like us to spend this time of change and uncertainty making pictures together.

Sharing our creations can forge connections in this time of social distancing. It can remind us that we are together, even though we must remain apart. It can be nothing more than a fleeting distraction. It can be a lifeline. Or it can be both. Let’s connect and share. Please share your work with the hashtag #snapwithme2020.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED - The only things you’ll need are some type of camera and a willingness to engage in creative play. It doesn’t matter if you are using the latest, fanciest, DSLR or mirrorless camera or the built-in lens of your cellphone. Come as you are. There's no cost to be a part of this virtual community.

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Let's Snap Together – Exercise 15: Tell A Story

2 min

Let's Snap Together – Exercise 15: Tell A Story

Story is in our DNA. It’s how we learn, how we make sense of the world around us. Our brain loves a story. If presented with a series of images or a series of facts, the brain will create a story about them, it will make something up. It doesn’t matter to our brain if the story is out of context or even completely untrue. Our psyche needs to connect the dots. If we can’t do that, if we can’t reason out a story, we will feel uncertainty and anxiety. The mind doesn’t even care

Let's Snap Together – Excercise 14: Portraiture

1 min

Let's Snap Together – Excercise 14: Portraiture

Before the invention of the camera, there were portraits. Even before the first human agreed to sit still and face an artist this genre was a passion for creators. It is said that some cultures don’t like portrait photography because they feel the making such a picture captures the spirit. They are right. But a good portrait doesn’t steal the spirit. It merely makes an image of its essence. Those pensive eyes, that magical smile, a face caught in the middle of a laugh or a lo

Let's Snap Together – Exercise 13: Still Life

1 min

Let's Snap Together – Exercise 13: Still Life

The still life is one of the most enduring art genres. In both paintings and photography, it has been a favorite form of creative expression for artists for centuries. The still life transforms inanimate objects, usually ordinary items like food, bowls, and tools into works of art by carefully considering their placement within a scene and capturing or painting the image, often with the benefit of dramatic lighting. During the Renaissance, artists developed a painting techniq

Let's Snap Together – Exercise 12: Capturing Motion

1 min

Let's Snap Together – Exercise 12: Capturing Motion

Both the camera and our brains love movement – motion, and emotion. Even in what appears to be the most static image, there is movement, a leading line, a golden triangle, a sense of direction. Our eyes dart across the frame led by the arrangement and proportion of images. But the camera can also freeze motion. It can make a runner still or a drop of water pause in mid-air. It can draw out emotion – it can move us to tears or make us laugh out loud. Photography by its very na

Let's Snap Together – Exercise 11: Color Clash

1 min

Let's Snap Together – Exercise 11: Color Clash

If analogous color suggests harmony and calm then color clash creates its opposite. We’ve all heard the saying, “Those colors don’t go together” or “Those colors clash.” Convention would suggest that we avoid pairing glaring colors together when creating our compositions. In reality, there is no such thing as two colors that don’t go together. It’s just that colors have different interactions. At a lecture I attended at the Getty Museum a few years ago, a curator talked about

Let's Snap Together – Exercise 10: Abstraction

1 min

Let's Snap Together – Exercise 10: Abstraction

We create an abstract photograph when we make an image that does not attempt to be an accurate depiction of a subject or reality. Instead, it shows shape, color, texture, and form for aesthetic effect. Some consider the purpose of making abstracts to be ‘art for art’s sake.’ The act of creation itself validates creative output. While others believe the art, even when it is not representational, should try and follow the forms and patterns found in nature. In either case, abst

Let's Snap Together – Exercise 9 Analogous Color

1 min

Let's Snap Together – Exercise 9 Analogous Color

Analogous colors are those which sit next to each other on the color wheel. Each color has a unique wavelength, thus similar colors are in sync with each other. Green, blue and purple together are an example of analogous colors. Using analogous colors minimizes contrast and creates harmony. Color harmony can be found in nature. Sitting on the dock, looking out at the horizon where the sky and ocean seem to meet, brings a sense of calm. The same sense of peace might be experie

Let's Snap Together – Exercise 8: Pop of Color

1 min

Let's Snap Together – Exercise 8: Pop of Color

A pop of color is an accent that stands out against the other (usually analogous) colors in a scene or photograph. It delivers a powerful impact because it establishes a compelling focal point that catches the eye. The fact that most leaves are green is no accident of nature. Their color is produced as a result of photosynthesis. The leaves appear green due to the color of the chlorophyll that is produced during the process plants use to convert light into fuel. In fact, gree

Let's Snap Together – Exercise 7: Experiencing Texture

1 min

Let's Snap Together – Exercise 7: Experiencing Texture

Think of texture as the personality of an object or shape. It’s the roughness of a weathered brick or the slickness of a pane of glass. It’s the detail that makes an image seem to spring to life. That’s because texture evokes emotion. Perhaps you’ve heard the saying, “The devil is in the details.” That’s because its the finishing touches that can elevate a design or image from ordinary to extraordinary. Texture is all around us. It covers every surface. It’s the characteristi

Let's Snap Together – Exercise 6: Amplified Perspective

2 min

Let's Snap Together – Exercise 6: Amplified Perspective

A point of view refers to the position from which we, as photographers, take a picture. Perspective is the apparent spatial relationship between objects that occurs as a result of our position. The viewpoint can dramatically change the feeling of a picture, or perception of an object because it amplifies perspective. As a young girl, I recall seeing the Electrical Parade during my very first trip to Disneyland. What I remember most about that day was a sign that was placed at

Let's Snap Together – Exercise 5 Contrast

1 min

Let's Snap Together – Exercise 5 Contrast

Just as our discernment of images comes from perceiving a balance of light and shadow, our comprehension is enriched by the tonal quality or contrast in what we see. Consider for a moment old black & white movies from the 1940s, film noir. The scenery and costumes worn by the actors, even the actors themselves were full of color. But the camera and film used could only record black, white and varying shades of gray. Even so, the films are visually compelling. The stark differ

Let's Snap Together – Exercise 4: Light and Shadow

1 min

Let's Snap Together – Exercise 4: Light and Shadow

The word photography comes from the Greek words photo (light) and graphe,(drawing). It literally means to draw with light. Yet it takes more than light to create a picture. To manifest an image also requires the absence of light, shadow. Too much light yields a blown-out or entirely white image. Too much shadow and the result is a completely black field. When we find the balance between light and shadow, that is when we truly begin to see. We naturally want to live our lives

Let's Snap Together – Exercise 3: Find the Lines

1 min

Let's Snap Together – Exercise 3: Find the Lines

There’s no such thing as a line really, its merely a suggestion– its nothing more than a series of dots in close formation. Lines can be straight, or wavy but all lines imply continuation. Their alignment seems to create a path. If there are gaps, our brains fill in the spaces. It connects the dots. The implications are powerful, we follow lines, both real and imagined, to drive down a road, focus our thinking, map our careers, and to add structure to lives… School, college,

Let's Snap Together - Exercise 2: Seeing Shape and Form

2 min

Let's Snap Together - Exercise 2: Seeing Shape and Form

Draw a circle with a piece of chalk in the sidewalk and you have created a shape. Take a basketball and put down on the same sidewalk and you have placed a form. It’s the play of light as it falls upon an object that gives it form, or dimensionality. The chalk-written circle on the pavement does actually have form. If we were to examine it under a microscope, we would notice the thickness, curves, and texture of the chalk or the gaps and mounds in the cement. But from our van

Exercise 1: Seeing Pattern

1 min

Exercise 1: Seeing Pattern

A pattern is a regularity in the world, found in human-made design, abstract ideas or nature. The elements of a pattern always repeat in a predictable manner. Our lives tend to fall into a pattern, an arrangement of ideas, actions and interactions that repeat. We arise, we dress, we go to work, etc; and, our brains love that because it understands what will happen next. Recent events have disrupted our arrangement of ideas and actions. It has limited our interactions with oth

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