Hi I'm Doug McKinlay
and you're watching AdoramaTV.
Now for today's episode we're
going to discuss trends.
Now the first thing to say about trends
is they are ephemeral.
They can change weekly, monthly
and yearly,
but no matter what there is a lot
of research that goes into trying
to identify trends and if you can do this
you're ahead of the game,
especially commercially.
Now trends are in every
industry and photography is no different.
For instance Pantone the color matching
system for this year 2018
has designated ultraviolet as the color of the year.
Now we're going to start to see that crop
in all sorts of places from fashion
stuff, nail varnish, to car colors to
house paint it's just one of those
things that we're going to see throughout
the year.
Now how that's going to affect us
as photographers, you know, it's going to be
more in the stock area perhaps
and that was a documentary and travel
photographer eventually that might even
trickle down into our to the part of the world.
That's just one example of how trends work.
Now the question we have
to ask ourselves as photographers
especially documentary travel
photographers is, do we adhere to trends
or do we ignore them? Now before trying to
answer that question, I'd like to throw
a few things out for consideration. Now
there's already been some trends showing
themselves individual work for 2018.
Now but how does a trend become a trend?
Well for pictures for instance Adobe and Getty
images, they tend to track all their
picture sales then they look for
commonalities and those commonalities
can become trends. It's just one way of
looking at it.
Now the first trend I want to talk about
is authenticity.
Now authenticity is a really hot buzz word
at the moment. Now this is a reaction to
the world we're living in right now
so it's a call out against things
like fake news and unreliable social
media platforms or openly manipulated
images and magazines.
What we're looking for is reality now.
The trend is to
show the world as it is,
not in some glorified, kind of darkroom digital
darkroom kind of way.
Now as a traveling documentary photographer
this is a trend
I can jump aboard any time of the week.
It's good to see the old commercial and
fashion guys taking down earth a little
bit. Now another trend I want to touch on
is travel imagery. Now in 2017
travel pictures had a good year. Now it
looks like 2018 is going to be just as good,
but it's not just pictures of the family
on holiday. It's a little more
sophisticated than that. Silence and
solitude seems to be the genre that
in the way these images are going, are
gaining a lot of traction, so images that
are quite open, you know, one or two
people maybe a cabin or a tent in the
forest or something or big wide-open
spaces. lots of negative space.
So contemplation is the key here.
This is the way this trend seems to be going,
so if I was out looking for these kind of
pictures that's exactly what I'd focus on,
lots of open spaces,
lots of individuals
trying to, you know, almost in a zen-like
way looking at their,
looking at the world about them.
A couple of other trends I'd like to mention
are touch and tactility,
and creative reality.
Now these two trends
are almost completely
different but I think they're also
linked in the sense that they're both
reactions to the to the world we live in
today. The uncertainty of it.
Now touch and tactility
are images that are starting to show
people in a closer proximity
where the images are almost
tactile and sensual. It's perhaps a
reaction to our 24/7 online world
we live in at the moment, where you can
easily lose yourself in technology.
Now I already see this happening
to my 10 year old boy.
Now creative reality is
it's kind of the opposite
in a sense that it's taking something
that's depicted in real life
and then manipulating it in a different way,
almost in a surreal kind of way
using techniques like infrared
or double exposure
and then of course manipulating
them in the computer.
These are two trends
that are starting to show themselves
a little more strongly into at 2018,
so something to be aware of
and on the look out for.
Now trends are a broadchurch
by their very definition they're going
to change but what are those questions
I asked it at the beginning?
Should I or should I not follow trends?
Well in my opinion both.
Now you take what you can
from a trend and you ditch the rest.
As artists I think the trends
are going to help you look at your photography
in a different way but if you get too caught
up in a trend. I think you'd land you
in a rut. So that's our take on trends.
Thanks for watching,
I'm Doug McKinlay for AdoramaTV.
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