516 593 9760 gary@rabenko.com

PHOTO PROSE – A Better Photographer?

A better photographer?!?  Verizon’s full page magazine ads touting the iPhone5s, lead off with the words: “A better photographer built in.” and continues with the words: “instead of teaching people to take better photos, why not teach the camera?”!

Just today I got a call from someone critical of “all these faux photographers “ and wanting serious photography instruction

Do you know that for at least fifteen years, there has been a button on traditional 35 mm cameras, labeled with a P.  Some photographers right here, right now, actually believe that button is for the “professional”!    As if pushing it will give you pro shots, or that pros are meant to use that mode.  The P button which lately can have many sub-menu settings in fact means program.

In program, the camera makes more decisions for you than in other modes like S or A, which stand for shutter and aperture respectively. In S or A mode, you choose that parameter, and the camera adjusts the other based on your selection. In P mode the camera takes over and does both.  All the photographer has to do is compose the shot- decide what he wants to make a photograph of. Cameras that have controllable lenses often have a zoom. And that is a huge bit of additional responsibility for the photographer. Having a zoom lens, the photographer must decide how tight to crop the scene before him. But most find it actually makes it much easier. Saves a heck of a lot of shoe leather! With a phone, zooming is usually a digital crop action, so there is no benefit to zooming for the shot, when you can crop it later. At least zooming with a physical lens that rotates or push pulls, means that you get the same large file size when shooting less of a scene.  Unlike digital cropping which the computer can do later.

Many today wish they could shoot the world while comfortably leaning against their door post!   The fact is that shooting from where you are, rather than moving to where you should be, does not alter perspective. Perspective is totally based on your location in relation to the scene. If you are making a photograph of your friend fifteen paces away, and the long tired boughs of an old maple tree are hanging down five feet from you on the right, then you could shoot through those boughs, or frame the shot with branches from the tree. Your friend could be shown though those branches. But if you were only ten feet from your friend, and zoomed all the way wide, you would never feel the effect of the tree… unless it fell!

The Verizon ad got me laughing, because it was not geared towards professional photographers, yet most professional photographers really do rely on automation. And I know many who would think this was technological progress for photographers, while seriously skilled pros, would scoff. But the real issue here is the public reading the ads. See everything has an effect on how people feel towards photographers and how decision on selecting a photographer is made. A large part of the public are happy to no longer consider photography to require any skill.  And happy not paying for any!  So many photographers seem to have embraced that notion and merrily take shot after shot, often in automation until the gig ends or their time is up. Automation involves more than just camera settings.  Automation represents the mindset, approach and attitude of most working pros. I have always looked at a project as unique: a new project on a new day. I have never done this project before: what is right for this family, this moment, this shot?  But watching photographers it is obvious that so many work by habit.  And this is now reflected in the client’s thinking.

Ads like Verizon’s further enforce the notion that imagery is all up to the technology.  Years ago, I would joke that automatic cameras would decide on what photos to take.  So a photographer need only bring them to an event and once unleashed they – the cameras would go into action.   Of course back then we were looking for new technology and dreaming for the day when we could have more sensitive films, lenses that transmitted more of the light, and zooms with a greater optical range.  Some of us who understood the theory and were pushing the envelope, just hoped for broadening our physical abilities a bit and easing cold hard technical limits such as overcoming minimum film base density in shadow detail. Which means being able to get usable results in low light.

Can you comprehend that cameras need one sixtieth the amount of light today than they needed twenty years ago!  The photographer who thinks P is the professional mode is perfectly in sync with the consumer who thinks the camera is taking the photo.  Neither that consumer nor those photographers believe in a photographer who really is doing what he must first and foremost be doing and which I have been speaking about for decades.   An artist sculpts life with light. The word photography in fact means drawing with light.  So any photographer calling himself an artist ( and today so many do ) first and foremost must understand, see, feel, control, and use light in a purposeful way.

Suppose you peered into a dark room, and there stood a small child.  You flip the switch turning on a bright light.  Are you now sculpting life with light?  Not unless you placed the light specifically in consideration of his features, form, personality and facial expression and  did many other things, and adjusted many settings to get the specific result you envisioned.  You would then be an artist, and your camera would be an artist’s tool.

The cellphone ad and many faux photographers have happily reversed the roles leaving the art up to the machine!   With the machine being the artist the “artist” has become a machine.

 

This article appeared originally in The 5 Towns Jewish Times – http://5tjt.com/