Here’s 3 Lessons I Learned from Ralph Gibson

And answering the question about how I got noticed by Leica

This email is coming a couple days late but that’s no accident. Last week, I was invited to the grand opening of the Leica NYC store in the meatpacking district and there was a whole weekend of events, workshops, and talks planned. One of them being an evening discussion with the legendary Ralph Gibson.

Ralph sits in my top five and beyond the prolific body of work, his discipline to the craft of photography is what impresses me most. He spent the better part of two hours sharing wisdom from across his journey and today, I wanna share three pieces that stood out the most for me.

(Keep in mind that these are notes that I was speed-typing during the talk—I’m hoping the full talk get’s published by Leica soon—so don’t read this as direct quotes)

---

On Technique and Editing

You don’t want someone to see you technique first. If someone looks at your photograph and sees your technique first, you’re sending the wrong message.

Ralph will edit an image and when he goes ‘wow’ he’ll go back and bring the slider of whatever setting he used back 50%. The goal is that he wants to make sure that the image reflects more of him as a photographer and not some specific technique. I found this very interesting, especially with respect to my colour work. How many people see the grade before the see the message? When he shared this thought I found myself hearing something that I need to take back to my editing desk.