Thoughts for today by Joe Farace
“Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.”— Henri Cartier Bresson
There are all kinds of photographers in the world and I’m not just talking about portrait shooters, landscape photographers or astrophotographers. In addition to the practitioners of these and other genres, there are, at least, four other photographic categories that I’d like to talk about today
Lets get started
Pixel Peepers: A photographer/friend of mine once showed me a portrait that he made of a strikingly beautiful model and proudly told me, “look how sharp her eyelashes are.” I guess they were sharp but the expression on her face said, “when is this session ever going to end?” I’ll confess to occasionally shooting pictures of brick walls but I only do it when writing a lens review. When it comes to lenses or even cameras used for my personal photography I just shoot’em and use’em. Ditto for DxO sensor scores; I never look at them for myself but occasionally will mention scores just to make fun of them as I did in this post.
Camera Collectors: I’ll confess to having a disposition to collect cameras including an obsession with Contax film cameras, which may have to do more with the time I had a bunch of them. Speaking of which, there’s no doubt some people who admire the elegance and construction of their cameras, seldom take pictures with them but do care if it’s the latest or “the best.” I once wrote in Shutterbug, back back when it was a real magazine, “if carpenters could hang a belt sander around their neck, they might not treat it as the tool it is” but that’s not they way it works in the real world.
How I made this photograph: When I was shooting with a Nikon D90, I only had the AF-S Nikkor 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6 VR lens and wasn’t able to get close to this scene that was photographed at the 105mm (157.5mm equivalent) focal length end of the lens. (above right) Since I didn’t have a longer lens or a teleconverter I did what anybody might do under the circumstances; I cropped the original image file, in this case using a 4:3 ratio. The image quality from that 12.3-megapixel APS-C sensor was good enough so even at a relatively large magnification the flower in this cropped image remains acceptably sharp and doesn’t fall apart. After cropping in Photoshop, this JPEG image file was tweaked using the Pro Contrast filter that’s part of Color Efex.
I currently own a gaggle of film cameras including a Leica M6 TTL, Zeiss SW, Seagull TLR, Leica Z2X and Minolta Prod 20, none of which I would part with after going digital, even though I seldom use any of these beautiful cameras. I should also include my love of the Canon A-1 as well. It’s called, photography not cameratography and this hobby/profession is really/mostly/mainly about making photos and not just collecting mechanical and optical Objet d’art but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t collect camera, especially classics. I’m looking at four non-working but nostalgic cameraa, including that selfsame named Nimslo! Lets face it, we’re all camera collectors to some extent.
Happy Snappers: We are also all snapshooters. I’m not talking about using cell phones to make selfies but shooting real photographs, like me and everybody else does of birthdays, anniversaries and other special occasions. For people, like my friend Renee, it’s all they use their camera for and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s one of a camera’s best uses and is something that makes photography the universal language.
I suspect there’s a bunch of people, much like me, that just enjoy the process of making photographs. Yes, we love cameras and lenses, although as tools not as objects of worship and make pictures of birthdays and anniversaries too but also try to make images that are technically and aesthetically pleasing just for the fun of the process.
There are probably more different kinds of picture takers out there and if you can think of any—or you are one—please click the Contact button and tell me what you think. Or maybe you’re just a photographer and want to talk about what kind of images you like to make. Either way, I’d love to hear about that too.
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