It's All About The Camera

     ''I really love your pictures. You must have a really good camera'' That is probably one of the most irritating, backhanded compliments a photographer can hear. Yup. It's all about the camera . I'm just the support staff. I just haul the damn thing around. Usually I just respond with a somewhat snide, ''Yeah. I taught it everything it knows.'' 

                                                                                                  

Manitoulin Sunrise
A shot I took on an eighty dollar Kodak digital
camera that I bought on sale at a Canadian Tire store

    You would be hard pressed to find a creative activity that relies  more on  technology than photography or filmmaking. I mean, someone whose favourite pastime is knitting, is capable of creating clothing with nothing more than a couple of long straight needles and some skeins of yarn. I know that I don't have the knowledge or skill set to perform that task.  Perhaps the non photographic crowd can be forgiven for thinking that, in the field of photography, it's the camera that does the lion's share of the work.  

    It was George Eastman, founder of the Eastman Kodak Company who, in 1888, coined the slogan, ''You press the button, we do the rest.'' Thus, photography was simplified for a massive market. That simplification has resulted in a perception of photography as a straightforward process of simply aiming a camera and pressing a button. That perception is valid if the intended result is nothing more than a snapshot for the family photo album. (Does anyone keep a family album anymore? Or do photo collections  exist solely on the hard drives of computers or the memory banks of cell phones?  Perhaps in a future post I'll make a case for printing as the best way to save important Images.) 

   

Snapshot of Greg and me after a sightseeing flight
over Georgian Bay. Matt, the guy who took the picture,
is a very good photographer and is really  really good at
flying airplanes!

    Don't get me wrong. I'm not disparaging the value of the family snapshot. Like most people, I have a lot of photos of family and friends taken during various events and celebrations. They are some of the most important images in my collection. However, I would not put them forward as stellar examples of the photographic craft.  To move beyond the basic snapshot requires some knowledge, a photographic skill set and, yes, ideally, a slightly more sophisticated camera.

 Emphasis more on the knowledge and skill set  than the camera. While working in several camera shops I had customers with top of the line professional series cameras who couldn't take a decent photo if their life depended on it. I also had customers who were doing amazing stuff with nothing more than a basic camera purchased second hand. As in all forms of human creativity, the tool is only as good as the person behind it.

     Ultimately, almost every photograph is a snapshot. Consider the minimal amount of time required to press a shutter button. Consider also that the subsequent exposure of light to film or to an electronic light sensor is usually measured in a fraction of a second. Making a photograph is really just the final act of what is (hopefully) an assiduously applied process. Perhaps my earlier comment about schlepping the camera around is rooted more in reality than it is in sarcasm. Almost every photographer I know owns several camera bags. We're obsessed with camera luggage! You know that you're in a good camera shop when the camera bag section is almost as big as the section for cameras and lenses!  A photographer with any experience knows that much more time is spent carrying the equipment than actually using it. Even a studio photographer is probably going to spend more time setting up lights and backdrops than actually shooting. Photography is really about what the viewer doesn't see. It's about the time spent in the process of getting the shot. 

    Here's an example.

    The picture above is an image that I've seen in my mind hundreds of times. It's an image of one of my kitchen chairs illuminated by the under-cabinet light over the sink in my kitchen. I liked the shadows cast by the dowels of the chair from  the single light source. For quite a while I would see this little scene while passing through the kitchen to the front door of ny scruffy little home. Each time, I told myself, ''I want to photograph that.''  Simple enough, right?

    Okay, to start with, the little light under the kitchen cabinet was not really powerful enough for photographic purposes. However, introducing another light source would reduce the effect of the shadows cast by the chair back. I could open up the lens aperture to gather more light, but that would reduce the depth of field (area of acceptably sharp focus) in the shot. I wanted  both the chair back and the shadows to be reasonably well defined. I could shoot at a high ISO (increase the camera sensor's sensitivity to light) but that would reduce the overall resolution of the shot. Solution? Put the camera on a tripod to steady it and allow the use of a longer shutter speed with the lens stopped down and a low ISO. Problem; Using the tripod with the shot as originally planned, introduced an unwanted shadow into the frame from the sole light source. Solution? Shoot from the opposite side of the chair into the light source. Problem; The kitchen table is in the way. Solution? Reduce the height of the tripod and mount it on the kitchen table. Problem; Can't see the focusing screen of the camera when mounted on the table. Solution? Stand on another kitchen chair to look down into the focusing screen on the camera. Problem; Having the camera and tripod on the table changed the overall framing of the shot. Solution? Take the camera off the tripod and change lenses on the camera. And on it went....

     Kind of a lot to simply make a photograph of some shadows and a kitchen chair. I probably spent the better part of an hour at it. Not to mention some time spent in post processing the image. Overall, I'm not really happy with the shot. I'll probably shoot it again with some minor changes. Yeah, I know. I'm a tad obsessive.  But if I have the knowledge and equipment to make an image in my mind's eye a reality, why not do it? It's the attention to detail that makes the difference between a good photograph and a merely adequate one. But hey, it's all about the camera. Or so I'm told.

My first camera. An Imperial Instant Load 900.
 I bought it with grocery store coupons when I was 9 years old.  

                                                                                                                                                                           ''I really like your pictures. You must have a really good camera.''  ''Yes. I was lucky to get it. Now I'm in the market for a hammer that drives nails straight and a guitar that plays beautiful music.''

        ...more later