I think it was Saturday, maybe it was Sunday, I was sitting under some shade trying to avoid the sun when the sound engineer seated next to me, he may actually not have been a sound engineer, it doesn’t really matter. Anyway, the guy sitting next to me, mentioned in passing that photography was about getting things in focus. Wow! Hang on, hold the conversation, add some more ice to my glass, pass me a cigarette and add that one to the list of lies that photographers tell each other: Bigger lenses = better photos, more mega pixels means better quality, you must use off camera flash, shoot raw or your photo quality will be too low and more rubbish that could possibly be swallowed by anyone. Sheesh, sharper photos.
Then scarcely a day later, I get a request to recommend a good photoshop book, followed swiftly by two separate requests to shoot with me by two guys who shoot landscapes and wildlife images. Since when did wedding photography become about getting the sharpest image with the biggest camera using an off camera flash and then photoshoping it, let me rephrase that, when did photography become the province of geeks with a gear fetish? Yep, welcome to another Dror rant, cause sometimes my mind just get blown by people who claim to be photographers and spend all their time copying the latest technique or getting the latest bit of gear.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for experimenting, and trying out new gear, but not just because you want to get the effect that X gets. How about first learning about photography? You know it isn’t just about snapping a photograph using the sharpest lens possible and the most mega pixels that you can afford. Photographs should tell a story, it’s a visual language with all the nuances, verbs and sentence construction rules that any language has, and before you spend another small fortune on a new lens you don’t really need, you may want to learn how to communicate using that language. If you don’t know about balance and tension, colour, light, lines, gesture, frame dynamics and visual weight you may want to read up on it before rushing out and getting that off camera flash. I’m not saying that all images should tell a story, but come on, I can count the number of wedding photographers in this country who do actually photograph rather than snap on one hand, and they are all fully booked well into 2009.
“Most people using a camera for the first time try to master the controls but ignore the ideas. They photograph intuitively, liking or disliking what they see without stopping to think why, and framing the view in the same way. Anyone who does it well is a natural photographer. But knowing in advance why some compositions or certain combinations of colors seem to work better than others, better equips any photographer.†– Michael Freeman in The Photographer’s Eye (a must in any photographer’s collection – if you’re local, don’t bother with Kalahari, they don’t stock it).
btw in case you were wondering the latest trend in wedding photography this year has been off camera flash with many photographers, including myself, investing in radio receivers. It’s been around for a while, but reached tipping point earlier this year and essentially it allows the photographer to set up a mobile outdoor studio, some do it well, most miss the point. At least the whole video light thing is almost over. I somehow can’t image James Nachtwey or Selgado, or even Tim Hetherington pulling out their off camera flash units.