#156 - I Found The Perfect Hobby For People Who Draw Or Paint!
The perfect companion hobby for people who draw or paint.
A boy and a girl are on a bicycle. He is peddling with his eyes closed, and she is steering and throwing a naughty glance my way.
treet Photography!
Hear me out! Hear me out!
I had another article scheduled for my newsletter, but I’m rather excited about what I did this week, art-wise, and I wanted to tell you about it.
You get to walk around a lot, which is healthy. Fresh air and vitamin D. You collect visual material that you can use for your drawings.
And it replaces your phone addiction!
Don’t use your phone’s camera. If you buy a camera, it is a new device you can play with, and it distracts you from your mobile phone! You’re constantly looking around for shots, and you completely forget you have a mobile.
A good camera produces much better photos than a phone camera. A dedicated camera is much better for taking pictures. It’s designed for it; taking pictures feels more natural and fun. Going back to taking photos with a mobile feels clunky. And the images out of a dedicated camera can be immeasurably better.
I have a Ricoh GR iiix, an amazing piece of hardware. The lens is amazing; you can get very sharp photos. It’s tiny and slips in any pocket. It looks like a flimsy piece of plastic, which is a benefit because people will think you can not possibly record anything serious with it, which makes you relatively invisible.
(Ricoh is not paying me.)
You can shoot RAW and then edit the photos on the camera, punching up the shadow areas so you see detail there, too. Again, this takes you away from your mobile. I won’t turn this into a photography tutorial; there’s just too much to explain, but there are amazing YouTube videos about street photography.
I take photos of people on the street for reference for drawing later. Because I don’t worry about composition too much with these photos, I tend to come home with at least 60 useful photos after walking around for two hours or so. This means I now have a metric ton of photo references to use for my drawing from observation and memory exercises, trying to rotate the pose, form and shape studies, and character designs based on these photos.
It is scary at first. Wide-angle lenses are best because people notice you less because of the small camera. The wide angle means the camera gets more light and has more depth of field. It does mean you have to get closer to your subjects, but it produces more dramatic shots. If people ask you what you’re doing, just explain to them that you’re an artist taking photos for reference for drawing later. Show them the photo you took and offer to delete it.
I had that happen this week, and the guys thought it was fantastic. They fist-bumped me and asked if they could pose for a photo! See this photo.
The cool dude on the left asked what I was doing, and his companion enthusiastically asked if he could pose for a photo. It was a super-cool interaction. They were two great guys.
Unfortunately, I forgot to shoot these in RAW, so I could have punched up the shadows quite a bit. Live and learn. Below are photos where I did shoot RAW, so I was able to punch up these photos considerably.
RAW is my discovery this week. In this mode, the camera saves the raw data from the sensor, so you can still change all the filters applied to the photo before it is saved to jpeg.
If an image isn’t too sharp and tells a remarkable story, you can still go all arty-farty, like in the one at the top of this article, where a guy and a girl are on a bicycle. The guy is peddling with his eyes closed, and the girl is steering, throwing a naughty glance my way.
The cool thing is that I can legally use the photos for reference since I own the copyright. One thing I have to be careful with is portrait rights: You tend to need permission to share someone’s likeness, if not always legally, then at least ethically. But that’s fine for character designs where the person is not recognizable in the drawing. I also blurred the faces in this article for that purpose.
Check if you are legally allowed to take photos of people on the street in your country.
The cons of the Ricoh GR iiix are that it is perhaps a bit expensive for some, the batteries don’t last long, and the interface is hard to understand at first, but if you invest time into it, you will be rewarded.
Before you buy an expensive camera, check your surroundings first to see if you have accessible opportunities to take photos in your area. I live near tourist areas, which allows me to easily blend in with tourists standing there, taking pictures themselves, so I only stand out a little. I get to take photos of cool people, cool outfits, and cool interactions that tell stories.
Do learn about shutter speeds, apertures, ISO, white balance, and RAW and how to edit them so that you can make the best photo each time.
This “hobby” combines well with drawing. I’m constantly looking around for shots and editing the photos later, and I completely forget about my phone.
Taking photos with a compact point-and-shoot camera is fun and addictive. And it can be a valuable addition to your drawing routine. Who would have thought that the solution to an unhealthy addiction to a device could be to replace it with a healthy addiction to another device?