pgriz
Been spending a lot of time on here!
- Joined
- Jul 30, 2010
- Messages
- 6,734
- Reaction score
- 3,221
- Location
- Canada
- Can others edit my Photos
- Photos OK to edit
Someone once told me: "engage brain before opening mouth". Very sound advice. Equally applicable to photography, I would think, as in "engage brain before clicking shutter".
We need to slow down, to reflect, to ponder, to sense below the superficial surface to the deeper truths. Like slow cooking, which aims to reunite the act of food-making and eating with the communal teamwork that sustains the spirit while the food sustains the senses and the body, slow photography seeks to "see" beyond the obvious. I deliberately take most of my photos on a tripod (granted, I'm not a sports or event photographer). The process of identifying a scene, of framing it in the viewfinder, of selecting the appropriate lens and exposure, of checking the ambient light, etc., etc., etc., is deliberate in that I follow a sequence of steps with specific intent and with the aim not just of exposing an image, but to try and capture a feeling or an emotion. Those who do other creative arts (writing, making music, constructing wood furniture, painting and so on), often start with an idea, or a fragment of a thought, which they then work on over time to flesh out and to build up into something that has meaning. So why do we feel that we need to hurry the act of making a photograph? The speed of the shutter is not an imperative to us as to the maximum amount of time we should be devoting to something.
Through the photo club that I belong to, I have been fortunate to see the work of, and talk to many very accomplished photographers. They made me re-examine the way I approach photography because it was their preparation prior to the act of pressing the shutter, that revealed their attention to their craft, and to the superb understanding of the technicalities of their chosen medium. One photographer is a street photographer who shattered my illusion that his was a reactive process. No. He researches the location, goes there often until he is part of the local scenery and is accepted by the locals, waits for the right moment (the right light, the right person, the right juxtaposition). He told me that he'd never get the images without the preparation beforehand.
@jwbryson1: I've done photography for many years and have shot thousands of slides, pretty much all were properly exposed and properly focused because I learned to do that very early in the game. At a certain point, it becomes automatic. And as Big Mike noted, you don't need to be doing this on each shot - only when the light conditions change. If the conditions are stable, I work out the exposure range at the beginning, set it up manually, and then shoot until something changes. If conditions are variable, then it's either aperture priority or shutter priority, depending on whether DOF or action-freezing is more important. The point is to focus on the image, not the mechanics of making that image.
We need to slow down, to reflect, to ponder, to sense below the superficial surface to the deeper truths. Like slow cooking, which aims to reunite the act of food-making and eating with the communal teamwork that sustains the spirit while the food sustains the senses and the body, slow photography seeks to "see" beyond the obvious. I deliberately take most of my photos on a tripod (granted, I'm not a sports or event photographer). The process of identifying a scene, of framing it in the viewfinder, of selecting the appropriate lens and exposure, of checking the ambient light, etc., etc., etc., is deliberate in that I follow a sequence of steps with specific intent and with the aim not just of exposing an image, but to try and capture a feeling or an emotion. Those who do other creative arts (writing, making music, constructing wood furniture, painting and so on), often start with an idea, or a fragment of a thought, which they then work on over time to flesh out and to build up into something that has meaning. So why do we feel that we need to hurry the act of making a photograph? The speed of the shutter is not an imperative to us as to the maximum amount of time we should be devoting to something.
Through the photo club that I belong to, I have been fortunate to see the work of, and talk to many very accomplished photographers. They made me re-examine the way I approach photography because it was their preparation prior to the act of pressing the shutter, that revealed their attention to their craft, and to the superb understanding of the technicalities of their chosen medium. One photographer is a street photographer who shattered my illusion that his was a reactive process. No. He researches the location, goes there often until he is part of the local scenery and is accepted by the locals, waits for the right moment (the right light, the right person, the right juxtaposition). He told me that he'd never get the images without the preparation beforehand.
@jwbryson1: I've done photography for many years and have shot thousands of slides, pretty much all were properly exposed and properly focused because I learned to do that very early in the game. At a certain point, it becomes automatic. And as Big Mike noted, you don't need to be doing this on each shot - only when the light conditions change. If the conditions are stable, I work out the exposure range at the beginning, set it up manually, and then shoot until something changes. If conditions are variable, then it's either aperture priority or shutter priority, depending on whether DOF or action-freezing is more important. The point is to focus on the image, not the mechanics of making that image.
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