Develop on fridays is a creative photography ‘study group’ led by Jefra Starr Linn. It’s going to consist of a post and an assignment each friday on the paislee press blog. We’ll cover a few basics but mostly dig into ways we can develop our voices and acclimate ourselves with our cameras.

It’s free and feel free to jump onboard with us at any time. Just bring your camera – whatever they may be. We officially begin on Jan 22, 2010.

the details
Lessons + assignments will post here at the paislee press blog on fridays.

Share your photos. Discuss the assignments. Make friends. Find each other and lift each other. This is about you. So we’re going to have a flickr group, a facebook group and a forum for you all. You can frequent whichever one (or all three) reaches you best.

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Interested in learning more about Jefra? You can get the low-down about her in this introduction post here. You can also learn more by visiting her site and checking out her latest work her blog.

We are so excited and can’t wait to embark on this journey together. Until then, we want to leave you with the story of how Jefra found her creative voice.

The path I’ve been down…

written by Jefra Starr Linn

And it’s not really a unique one.

When I first started taking pictures I wanted to be good. REALLY good. The way all the fancy photographers were good.

One place I found that helped me learn the ropes was a forum called ILP – www.ilovephotography.com. At the time it was free and it had lots of photographers of all different levels of experience that would comment and help each other along. People would post photographs and tell how they made the shot or what actions they’d used and others could post about how much they loved the photos or if they may have had a suggestion to help out that person.

There were some obvious superstars that were in those forums and I grew to be friends – Jinky, Tara Whitney, Cheryl Muir to name a few. And looking at their work was humbling to say the least. Often everything I saw other photographers show was so technically strong and accurate. I would edit carefully what I showed everyone. “nope. Their face is out of focus, can’t show this.” Or “ this is just a photo of a leg. Toss it.”

Then I read about a book called Blink by Malcom Gladwell – which basically is a theory that professes that one’s initial gut reaction is right, and so should be acted on rather than overanalyzed.

It was really really really liberating. Where I initially thought “this is blown out or too bright or blurry”, I found myself thinking “SCREW IT – I love the one where you only see a finger or a foot or where the face is blurry”. These were the first shots where I just decided ‘what the heck – show em’.

That’s when all freedom broke loose.

You obviously have to know the rules to break them, but for lots of us, we DO know the rules deep inside.

It’s following this pathway that’s brought me the most happiness and satisfaction in my photography.

So now, after a session I’ll come home and look through the pictures and think “love this and this and this, but the rest of these are just not doing it for me. Yes they’re technically correct and composed well but they’re blah to my heart.” It makes things go fast and you discover who you and what you see and therefore can contribute.

Go on, give it a try. Follow your Blink.

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This is Jefra

these self portraits were taken straight out of the shower (well, with clothes but sans makeup). these are straight out of the camera, no presets, no curves, nothing. so these shots are as real as it gets.

this is what we want from you. we want you to bring yourselves and be completely honest to yorself about what you love and how you shoot. come naked. well, emotionally.

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We hope you will join us next friday, Jan 22nd.