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Coworkers from my last job in South Korea back in ‘07. Shot with a Konica/ Minolta Dimage Z-6.
You know… Hopping into The Wayback Machine via my old hard drives full of photos…
Well, I keep getting the feeling that if I lost the whole last eight or so years worth of photos since I first picked up the hobby, nothing would be missed. Sure, I have taken (IMHO) some pretty good shots. But a lot of them have so much baggage with them that they fail as art objects and live only as reminders of things I’d be smart leave in the dust of the past.
What I’d like to do is get some people to sit around me while we go through the hundreds of rolls of film and thousands of digital images, and pare it down to like my best two hundred or so. Photography hobbyists and civilians alike. If both can agree, it’s a keeper. It’s art then.
The rest can go on the pyre of the past with the rest of the luggage.
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Wonderful. A good philosophy to have about life, I feel.
I have a number of kid portraits that I’m quite proud of. But many of them hold too many un-editable identifiers for me to feel comfortable with posting them online so they remain something for me and their mothers alone. I can see why some folks avoid it all together.
Personally, I find the good/suck ratio for candid “street” photography like the images below this one are pretty bad. That may simply be due to my skill at that type of photography. I prefer this sort of off-the-cuff portraiture. East Asians are great to do this with since everyone is taking pictures of themselves and each other non-stop. I’d like to try it some here in Canada but everyone is so fearful I don’t think much of my chances of success…
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Young enthusiast standing beside me trying to shoot the crowd. We eventually took each other’s photo.
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The rangefinder camera.
Aka: The “Why the fuck did I forget to take the lens cap off again?! Fuck I’m an idiot! Gah!” camera.
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Oh I’m full of things that are considered blasphemy in today’s industry. I don’t like dslr’s. I don’t think digital is a good way for most people to learn photography. I don’t think there is any way to archive digital files, at least I’ve never found a single person who actually knows how or has any real plan for the future. I think a lot of photographers, after switching to digital, are not nearly as good as they were during their analog days. I think digital has killed the editing abilities of most photographers. I don’t think seeing an image right after you make it is a good thing. I don’t think having the ability to overshoot every scene actually helps make better images. I think digital has trivialized the idea of photography in the minds of everyday people. I think our industry is now almost entirely centered around technology as opposed to imagery. I’ve never seen an HDR image I like, and the fact I’m starting to see this technique creep into nearly every genre of photography makes me sick.
How is that for starters? I don’t get invited to many parties these days. At the core, digital is a great thing. What we do with it, how we use it…that is another matter.—(via ryanmuirhead)
What I agree with.
- You should learn with a film camera. Shutter speed. Aperture. Film speed. Done. The cost of a failed roll will force you to get a handle on the basics quickly.
- Archiving the digital imagery for the ever changing proprietary formats is a problem. I believe Pentax uses a RAW that’s accessible to all software so there’s a reason to go with them.
But to main problem I see is the constantly increasing screen resolution. It may not be a problem when printing. Let’s face it: Unless you’re hanging poster sized in a gallery you’re not going to need all that resolution. But the large images I took seven years ago are now medium sized. In seven more years they will be postage stamps.
- HDR does look like crap 99% of the time. I’ve seen a few good uses of it, but it’s a tool best used sparingly.
- Yes, people still haven’t figured out the best ways to use digital imaging. It’s either some over rendered mush like the above mentioned HDR. Or it’s “Film. But, like, not.” Which seems to be a waste of technology to me.
What I don’t agree with.
- I look at the contact sheets Magnum sometimes allows us to see. I see ten or twenty or thirty shots of the same subject with the best one outlined in red. I think, “If so-called overshooting is good enough for Capa and those guys…”
But what I think they actually mean is the constant second guessing and checking that gets called “Chimping” in some corners. That is actually self editing. It may look uncool and waste precious seconds of shooting, but its still being selective about the images produced.
- Yes. The dirty unwashed masses have cameras now that can take some pretty decent shots when left on auto mode and you are no longer a special little boy wizard who can freeze light. Deal with it.
(via jayavant)
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I know. Parking lot. Big friggin’ whup, eh?
Here’s why this parking lot is important: This is the first time I’ve seen it from this angle. You might be tempted to “Big whup.” it again. That would be mistake. See, it reminded me that in photography, and in life, a person should not let themselves see the world around them as always the same. You need to take the overly familiar and essentially try to go around the back of it. It becomes a different thing then.
Those are all the same buildings that I’ve seen thousands of times. But from this perspective, they aren’t.
I want to do this with my remaining time in Japan since I couldn’t do so with my time in Korea since I left in a haze of anger. Get a better look at it from a different angle.
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Don’t get me wrong. Phone cameras are very useful tools. From photographing bad cops abusing their authority, to your homemade porn. Their convenience is their strength.
But like all tools, they have their limits. As good as the camera on this iPhone is, it’s useless for a distance shot like this. The roofers cut quite a dynamic silhouette this morning that I found myself wishing I had a camera with telephoto lens on it. I’ve tried to use a tight crop to bring more focus on them, but even that has limits.
Cameras are tools. Today I had a slide rule instead of a calculator. Such is fate.
