Michael Torkildsen - Composition is a Dance!

Welcome to episode 238 of F-Stop Collaborate and Listen!

This week on the podcast I was joined by Michael Torkildsen - a landscape photographer who has been living on the road since right before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, with his eyes on becoming a full-time photographer. 

Michael has had to pivot quite a bit since he launched into his full-time career and has recently been putting in the hard work of writing a self-published book on composition. Michael and I chat about his book project, and focus a lot of our time on discussing the challenges of composition in landscape and nature photography. We also discuss:

• Stories from working in his mother's 1-hour photo shop,
• His journey into full-time photography through COVID-19,
• Photographing icons and its application in composition,
• Rules of composition and how to use them (or not),
• Our thoughts on Instagram,
• And a lot more!

In the episode we briefly discussed Greg Vaughn's excellent Photographing Oregon book, and Greg sent in a correction to the discussion:

"For Photographing Oregon, the publisher and I arranged a license for each of those photos with the creators. The photographers were paid in the form of 10 copies of the book (valued at $25 each), plus they received an adjacent photo credit and a link to their website in the book. With the exception of one photographer, all of the photographers that I asked to contribute readily did so on those terms. We did the same for photographs featured in Photographing Washington."

Here's who Michael recommended for the podcast this week:

• Steven Webber.
• Hilton Chen.

Other items mentioned on the show:

1. Support Michael's Kickstarter Project.

2. Michael Rung's special offer.

3. Support the show on Patreon.

4. Join us on Clubhouse!

I love hearing from the podcast listeners! Reach out to me via Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter if you'd like to be on the podcast or if you have an idea of a topic we can talk about. We also have an Instagram page, a Facebook Page, and a Facebook Group - so don't be shy!

We also have a searchable transcript of every episode!

Thanks for stopping in, collaborating with us, and listening. See you next week.