Shooting in P mode

[TeeVex]

As I think more about the ways to get comfortable first with one's ability to see images and second with the technical ability to achieve them, I begin to think that this overwhelming disdain for shooting in 'P' actually hurts the development of good photographers more than it helps. By 'good' I mean people who are creative and even, perish the thought, artistic.

When we encourage children to dance and jump around to be expressive, we as parents and teachers, don't tell them it would be much better if they used the traditional balletic movements and positions because we know intuitively that huge obstacle would stifle not only their creativity but take away much of the spontaneous joy that is achieved from that expression.

The prime 'purpose' of (my kind of) photography is the visualization and the rendition of something meaningful, sometimes even beautiful. The ability to do that depends primarily on the ability to see that meaningfulness and then secondarily to learn to capture it. I don't need to be a great technician, I need only to be good enough to do what I want.

The emphasis that we read so often here is on the mechanical. This is what to do, this is the best way to do it and if it isn't what you like, run get a flash.
That's mechanics, that's not photography. And so we get an enormous volume of stuff, pictures that look essentially the same, and boring. Everyone cares about the f stop, the lens, the lighting - and they see that as the key. And so they turn from making images to running a camera and accessories.

Read any forum here and the questions and concerns, even those involving actual images, are primarily about equipment and technique and f stops and lighting. This all to photographers who haven't even begun to be able to see even the technical inadequacies in their own images and correct them let alone the artistic ones.

So, if anyone asks me what to do, and they are serious about learning to create then maybe I will tell them just to shoot on P for a while and then we'll talk about their images. When they want to learn to control what their camera does in order to make the image better then its time to talk about the other issues.

Let's not make everyone learn to build and fix a car before they can go for a ride in the country.

Sooooooo helpful and very wise, thank you for this.

 

[Bebulamar]

I don't use the P mode just because it's more difficult to use than M mode. Certainly I always pick the easiest way to achieve what I want.