Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second.” ―
William Mortensen, when writing in his book Monsters & Madonnas said, “Many amateurs who should be reading these words are now engaged in scanning the data list (exposure data) with an eager eye, ‘Here,’ they are saying ‘Is how it was done.’ Could I reach them, I would answer: No kiddies, this is not how it was done. The (exposure) data are the bone and gristle from which all sustaining juices have been boiled away. The data is true in detail but for the person who wants to make pictures they are the least valuable information the book contains.”
You may have noticed that for many images appearing on photographic blogs, the authors don’t always provide exposure data. For featured images they usually describe the process and software tools used to make the photograph or picture as Mortensen and my former professor at Maryland Institute would have it. I think that’s because these photographers believe, like Mortensen, that even if you were standing in the same place with the same camera, lens and exposure as them, your photograph would look different because everyone is different. I found this to be true because after I conducted a private glamour photography workshop where the student and I were using the same camera, lens and even the same speedlight to photograph a model and the results were so different you could hardly believe they were made at the same time and place. (You can read all about that experience in more detail here.)
How I Made this photograph: I photographed this butterfly on flowers when taking a walk around O’Brien Park in Parker, Colorado. The camera used was a Pentax K100D Super with a SMC Pentax 135mm f/2.5 lens. The exposure was 1/500 sec at f/5.6 and ISO 200.
You may notice, as with the above image, that I typically provide exposure data for photographs that appear in these posts. My reasons for doing so are more complex and perhaps a bit twisted but here goes: It may be glib of me to say the main reason I provide exposure data is because it’s the format that (when there were real) photo magazines used ever since Mortensen wrote the above words in 1936. Closer to the truth is that during the time before I had this blog and wrote for another photographic blog, its readers kept asking me for exposure data on my images but the gentlemen who ran the blog steadfastly refused to include it. When I started my own blog, I decided to include this data because I found that people want to know the exposure data for a specific image, even if the information may not do them any good, except…
…and you know there was a “but” didn’t you? When I write about studio photography, like my post on The See-Through Clothing & Lingerie Series: Scarlet Ana and provide exposure data for the portrait, that information says a lot about the output of the light source being used. In this case, the fact that a set of moderately-priced monolights produced that much power is significant and important, especially for anyone considering purchasing one of these lights. The exposure data shown helps readers understand that.
Now as the man once said…you know the rest of the story.
If you enjoyed today’s blog post and would like to treat Joe to a cup of Earl Grey tea ($2.50), click here. And if you do, many thanks.
Along with photographer Barry Staver, Joe is co-author of Better Available Light Digital Photography with new copies available for $21.49 and used copies starting around nine bucks, as I write this.