Last weekend I was babysitting for a friend. During those two days I had a chance try my luck on a longboard. Something I had always wanted to try but never really had the opportunity to do. It was fun and painful (at some point). đ
During that time I also had great time reading a review draft of a book written by a photographer S. Dirk Schafer. I got quite the chuckle out of it. It’s filled with great quotes about photography, photographers, art, passion and the author thoughts and short stories about photography, his career, his experience as a photographer. From the fist page to the last this book is filled with witty humor. On that note, I want to keep this post as a humorous one, as well, although I will mention one quote in here I found in the book:
The camera is a piece of s***… Nikon doesn’t give you vision. Canon doesn’t give you vision… That’s your job.
Zack Arias
A camera is an amazing thing, but it needs something else then a fast lens to be a powerful tool. You can learn how to take better pictures with iPhone by stopping the mindless “snapping”. Get inspired by what you see around you, in your life and in social media.
If you short on ideas, try to recreate something at first. The more you do it, the better you’ll get in creating your own, unique images.
Often many of us forget about it. We blindly pursue equipment that’s the most innovative, the most expensive, recently updated, you name it. We think, after we get the fastest lens our pictures immediately will get better. While that might be true in a technical point of view it has nothing to do with the vision you have for the picture. If I didn’t have my vision for my style and the way I want to create a certain portrait my super duper Nikon D800 would not help me with that even if I begged it.
I also think that in the world of “snapping” many people have lost themselves in just “capturing” everything and anything without stopping and taking the time to look at the whole picture and try to make an art out of it, look at the situation with a vision…
I am guilty of all of that myself. I often catch myself longing for new equipment thinking it might help me with something. But with what, I ask myself. How much sharper I want my pictures to be? Do I really want to join the rat race where all photographers point at each others’ pictures saying this is “too soft”, this is “out of focus”, etc. Really? No. I don’t think I want that nor I need that. What I need and want is to have more time to craft my vision and the iPhone camera is pretty helpful with that lately, implementing the truth in the saying: “the best camera is the one you have with you”.
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Ewa, your Family Photographer
2 Responses
Wow. Babysitting is quite productive activity for you đ
Would you extrapolate how to craft your vision?
Iryna, I wish the process of crafting my vision for some of the photographs was as patiently and carefully done as my crochet projects. Some I create from the pattern (of course I always change something here and there), some I don’t have any patterns, I just have an idea, a vision, a picture in my head, then I try to put it together, I try several yarn types, colors, hooks, etc… until it all works (or not in many occasions). I wish to do the same with my photographs, and I am slowly getting there. There was a time when I was doing it, as I mentioned in the comment to Steven, when I was shooting film. It took me up to a week or more to shoot one film with 36 pictures. 36 pictures today!!! Well, I take more in a 10 minutes of shooting my kids. There is a greatness in the ability to do just that and not to worry about other issues, but at the same time I loose the vision of what I really want to shoot. I’m glad I got back to the helios because it reminded me about those days, as well, as made me think twice (or even more times), before I press the shutter. Big part of crafting my vision is talking to you, sharing, and hearing a feedback… Thank you tremendously for that!
xoxoxo