Richard Bryant Exhibition: Tips from the master
We asked Richard Bryant for some advice on how to improve our own urban photography.
1. Composition, composition, composition
Composition is such an intuitive skill, but I've always believed it to be crucially important. I always try to simplify compositions. Really all the images in this exhibition and in the book are terribly simple. The textures and forms may be complex but the actual composition of the shots is incredibly simple. Because of this I think the images communicate a feeling of space.
2. Always try to shoot early and late
Early light and late light is always more beautiful than in the day, from an architectural point of view. I do a lot of work in equatorial areas which can be a nightmare because the sun just shoots straight up in the air and then in the evening it comes down just as rapidly. Because it all happens so fast you only get from 4-6 in the afternoon and 6-8 in the morning to shoot, leaving the middle of the day for interiors perhaps.
3. Always shoot RAW
The very basic digi-cams can only shoot jpegs, more sophisticated ones can shoot RAW files, giving you more control of the tonal qualities and colour qualities of the image before you process the images. With a jpeg, the camera does the processing, and usually the processing engine on a camera is not as good as one you can use on your computer.
4. Do a course on Photoshop
I was very lucky to be invited by Corbis, one of the world's biggest picture distributors, to go on one of their special Photoshop courses. It was just brilliant. Photoshop is so unbelievably huge, powerful and all encompassing you can never learn it all. The course gave me some invaluable shortcuts and showed me how to get started in so many areas which I hadn't touched on before.
5. Look for tonality
Even though you're shooting in colour, look for tonal contrasts. A lot of photographers take pictures that look flat or don't have much depth. You've got to have a feeling for the sort of tonal range that the sensor or the film, or whatever you're shooting on can accommodate.
6. Clean your sensor
Don't allow the sensor in the camera to get dirty to avoid time cleaning images in Photoshop. But, be very careful to avoid damage to the sensor.
