All language subtitles for 1. Gw The Art

The first thing we're gonna talk about

is the art of photography.

Listening to your little voice,

and really working out how it is that you see the world.

On this course,

there are three main ways of looking at photography.

One is the technical.

One is the business.

And one is the art.

And I use the term art carefully here.

I don't regard myself as an artist.

And the reason I don't is because

the work I do is commercial.

It's done for tangible reasons.

And I feel that a true artist does work

purely from their heart.

They don't do it for the money.

They do it because it's an expression of something

that's purely inside them.

Whereas, I regard myself as a professional photographer.

I don't make my living by selling photos on gallery walls,

I make my living by taking photographs

that in some way promote something.

However, I do regard myself as artistic,

and I am guided creatively through artistic principles.

And to me, being an artistic photographer

is about listening to your inner voice.

Now, all sorts of artists, be the actors, musicians,

sculptors, painters, designers,

you will find that the best of them know intrinsically

when something feels right or feels wrong,

and they listen to themselves,

and that is no different in photography.

That inner voice is the thing that tells you

whether you believe in the pitcher.

Do you believe in the pitch?

Do you believe in the job you're being offered?

Do you believe in the client?

Do you think you're gonna enjoy working with these people?

Do you believe that the picture you've taken is authentic?

Technically, it might be the picture that you thought

you wanted to take,

but when you're actually given the image

to look at at the end,

do you, with all the emotion of the shoot taken out of it,

do you believe the photo that you've taken?

That's all about listening to the inner voice.

And the most important thing about this

is to at least be aware that you're supposed to listen

to your inner voice.

And I do think that there are probably

not a lot of really successful photographers that don't.

Nearly everyone starting out in photography

has to make compromises in their life.

And I certainly made a huge amount of compromises

that I would never dream of making today.

I took jobs on that I would never consider taking.

I agreed to go along with someone else's idea,

that I in my heart knew was wrong,

but I suppose either I wasn't confident enough

or experienced enough to sort of know

it was worth standing my ground on.

Also, things you think you know at the beginning,

you often find you really didn't know later on anyway.

So, it's an absolute minefield.

Where you have to get to is a place

that you start to listen, and you can only start to listen

if you know you're supposed to be listening.

So I'm saying, listen out for your inner voice

and start to trust it.

I would say that the main difference

between a sort of struggling jobbing photographer

and a highly successful one,

is that the highly successful one

has really learned to harness that inner voice.

I think when I talk to any major actor, for instance,

they are absolutely 100% led

by how they feel inside their heart.

And a successful photographer has not only learned

to harness that inner voice,

but learn how to manifest that into a look and feel,

that when someone looks at their pictures they say,

"That has to have been taken by him."

You know, the coolest thing I hear now is when someone says,

"I love this, it looks like

one of those Greg Williams pictures."

You know, or someone says, "That's a classic Greg Williams."

That to me is success.

There's a lot of photographers,

and you look at their websites

and they have a fine arts section, which is maybe, you know,

nudes or black and whites or something.

And then they have a landscape section,

which is beautiful landscapes or burning skies.

And then they have a repertoire section

that's all quite gritty and black and white and cool.

And then they have a beauty section that's highly strobe lit

and everything's fabulous.

And whereas they're very, very capable

at doing all of these things.

What our client looks at is they say,

"That guy is a technician."

Yeah. And you know, technicians are replaceable, right?

What you wanna be is the person that has a unique view

of the world and people pay you for that view.

So if you look at me, my thing is candid,

authentic moments with movie stars, right?

That's what the box that you would put me in

as a photographer.

The Jack of all trades is a master of none.

And without a unique perspective

that someone can put their finger on,

without being able to put you in the box of what you are,

it's very hard for you to rise high in photography, I think.

One other thing on these shoots,

especially when there are big crews

and there are so many different sort of contributing factors

coming in, that what you have to do,

and this is a real inner voice thing

is you have to stay on target, right?

Often there are people that you work with

that take your shoot in different directions.

Often, obviously it's the subjects, but sometimes it's not,

sometimes it's the creative director, art director,

makeup artist, hair stylist,

and everyone in a way has got their own agendas, right?

And what you have to have is the agenda to get the shot done

that you're trying to get, mixed with being collaborative.

So, you know, you have to have a singular vision

whilst being completely open to everything else

whilst knowing what of those other things

that are coming in are your friend and what are your enemy,

what'd you have to push away and watch you have to accept.

And the important thing to remember

is that at the end of the shoot,

the buck stops with one person.

No one's gonna get all that

with the creative director fault,

it's the photographer's fault.

If the photos don't work, it's down to you.

So within that, you have to be the captain of the ship.

You got 20, 30 people working around you.

You are the captain of the ship.

And that can be very difficult, you know,

working with a huge actor,

that can be very hard to be the captain of that ship.

But as for the photos that are gonna come out,

you are gonna be answerable for it.

Be the captain of your ship.

I think that photography is a bit like theater,

where the viewfinder is a bit like the (indistinct).

And you've got the (indistinct) for theater

and where ever you choose to point it is what's filled.

But what you're doing is you are filling that frame,

and when you're holding the camera to your eye,

you're the only person in charge of that.

No one else has any impact on what you have chosen

to fill that frame with.

And what you'll find is that the more experienced you get,

that frame could change every few seconds.

It's one of the reasons you very rarely see me use a tripod,

let's say I'm walking backwards down a street

and someone's walking towards me,

my hands become like a gimbal

and it's not like a steady cam gimbal,

it's a gimbal that is working in unison with my eye

in fractions of seconds and changing the composition

all the time as I'm walking backwards,

because I'm trying to get their head

just to that part of the frame, a lamppost comes into frame,

a shock comes past, suddenly there's a frame

within a frame that I wanna drop someone into.

And that stuff is pure and simple,

flying by the seat of your pants,

being the captain of your ship.

So with that, there's a beautiful balance

that you've got the picture that you're trying to take

on the one hand mixed with whatever the hell

is being thrown at you, right?

And so you've got this sort of 50-50 spontaneous,

50% planning and you juggle them all

and you'll make your decisions

and you might be changing,

your exposure to the sun could be going behind the cloud,

anything can happen to change.

And so, all that prep that you've done,

all that really understanding exposure,

really understanding that that fulfilled,

really studying vanishing points and compositions

and shapes that you like and your frames within frames

and your shot speed and everything you're gonna need

when you're moving, and it all comes into play

like one big circus.

Whereas I was aware of it before,

I honestly think that I truly sort of engaged

with my inner voice as a photographer

in the last seven years.

I was probably in my early 40s when I really worked out

that how I work today is how I work.

Now, that sounds crazy because,

I had a good career as a photojournalist in my 20s

and really quite successful career

doing more commercial work in my 30s,

but this stuff really takes time.

It takes time for the penny to drop

and that penny can only really drop if you know,

if you're open to listening out for it, I suppose.

So, I'm not saying that you need to rush it

but what I am saying is that I don't think

I even knew that I was supposed to have a singular view

that I brought to everything.

The way that I look at things today is a real reflection

of my character, of my personality,

and of the way that I am with people,

the empathy that I have for people,

and the empathy that they give back to me.

So, please don't sweat it if you don't know that yet,

what I'm saying is that you need to have that as a targets.

You need to listen to yourself and look at your work

and look at the pictures that are successful.

And look at the pictures that are unsuccessful and ask,

"Why did that work? Why didn't that one work?"

And invariably, the photos I take now

are my most successful when they are,

I suppose a reflection of me in some way.

They're a reflection of my personality,

and the perspective of how I view the world.

That's because in those circumstances,

honesty and authenticity are the two most important things

that I produce in my pictures.

If I can produce something that you believe in,

that feels authentic,

and that you don't feel you're being hoodwinked about,

those are I believe my most successful pictures.

And they are the reason that I'm doing as well today

as I am.

I'm very collaborative in my shoots

I'm very lucky that I work with some of the greatest artists

in the world, and it's interesting if you think,

if I went into those shoots and said,

"This is the photo, this is the light, stand there."

That's my picture, right?

I know I'm a good photographer,

but you know, I don't have the mind

of some of the subjects that I'm working with,

then think of what I do, which is I come in and I say,

"Well, I don't really know what the picture is yet.

I just know that you're cool when I'm good at my job

so we're gonna get something."

And that's often how I think about it.

I like to walk into a room,

having seen it for the first time.

People always like, "Do you wanna work here?"

And I'm like, "No, not really."

I'd like to walk in and feed off the energy

of the person I'm shooting and let them feel my empathy,

me feel their empathy.

And together we produce something far greater

than I could possibly write or dream up

because it's the culmination of two minds, not one.

If you get two creative minds together,

they create a third mind that's greater than both of them.

So in summary, you know, there's a lot going on, right?

You take a picture and you've got all the technical aspects

that you've got to get right.

You know, your light, your cameras, your kit, your exposure

or everything that you're doing, your composition.

Then you've got the commercial side.

So you've got clients you've got to please,

briefs you've got to do,

boxes you've got to tick, and amongst that,

what you have to learn to then do is just pause.

And I say, pause.

That pause may be a quarter of a second, right?

But just pause enough to then check in inside

and see what you, the artist wants to do

with those technical and creative elements

to make it more than the sum of its parts.