I have a very love-hate relationship with photography. The amount of time and money spent on what is essentially a hobby is high compared to the satisfaction I get from the output and results. I look forward to the ritual of preparing and packing all the gear, and travelling to places to take photos – and there are fleeting moments when I find something sufficiently interesting to photograph in a marginally interesting or engaging way. It all falls flat when I look at the results.
Having thought about this for a few weeks, I’ve come to some conclusions:
- Everything I shoot is awful. I’m my own worst critic.
- There’s no point in forcing something that isn’t meant to be.
- I still occasionally lust after fast glass. And I like this.
- I don’t need the latest and greatest for my budget.
- I need to read more. Actually, I need to just start reading.
- I need to learn. And I want to learn.
I started to develop an interest in photography in about 2006 and took an evening course at the local college. The course itself was badly-written, badly-led and could have been done in a third of the time far more effectively. A 36 week course starting in September meant many dark evenings – not the most inspiring time to take photos and learn about light, etc.
I own a Canon 30D digital SLR from 2006. If I knew how to get the most out of it, I think it’d be the perfect camera for me. I occasionally get sneery comments from people with smaller cameras, higher pixel counts & in-camera features that make life easier for them. The best photographers I know have high quality output, engaging and/or emotive motifs and don’t babble on about megapickles. They have an eye for detail and have consistently high quality shots for their chosen fields, be they portraiture, nature, candids, abstract or whatever.
I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t need shiny gear as a crutch for photography. For a large part of 2009 and the first half of 2010 I was lusting after a Canon 5D as a replacement for my 30D. It’s a step up in terms of technical functionality – bigger, faster, does full HD video, and other bells and whistles.
Crucially, it’s still just a camera. I’d been at the point where I had enough money to buy it and wimped out at the last moment. There’s a store down the road where I could’ve walked in, paid money and walked away with a new camera. I could’ve used my new camera with my existing lenses and had an instant upgrade to my gear.
But for what? I’d have gone from a Canon camera to another Canon camera and been 1600GBP+ worse off. Sure, it would’ve been a bit faster and shinier, create enormously large photos and made my ePenis girth a bit more substantial.
The sticking point for me and photography is the way I shoot photos. There’s a dial on most digital SLR cameras that you can twiddle to various modes. I don’t use the green square (drunk mode). I don’t use the tulip, mountain, or head mode. I used to shoot in P, now I shoot in Av. I want to shoot in Manual, but I’m not there yet.
This is how I explain the various modes, with a hopefully-appropriate analogy:
- Green box: your live-in chef cooks your food for you. It looks appealing and tastes nice. Chef responds to your moods by making decisions for you.
- Tulip/mountain/head: you know you want carrots, chef will make sure you have something with carrots in and make sure that they look like nice carrots.
- Av/Tv: you know you want carrots and do some of the cooking yourself. Chef helps for the bits you’re not sure about.
- Manual: you cook. You decide ingredients, cooking methods, which pan to use, how long to cook for, and the onus is on you to get it right. Chef lets you get on with it and watches ‘Deal or No Deal’.
Using this analogy, I sort of know how to cook (a bit) and know what I want to achieve, but I’m cooking my carrots in the wrong way. Chef is helping out, but is essentially turd polishing because I’m getting it wrong without knowing why I’m getting it wrong.
Enough of the carrot metaphor. I know the maths behind aperture and exposure, I know I don’t want to hipster-ify my shots, and I know I need to check/set my dials and settings during a photo shoot to make sure they’re correct. I want to take/make photos that I can look at and enjoy, and if other people say ‘wow’ now and again then I would consider that a bonus.
When it comes to post-processing, I trawl through pages of garbage. I hate just about everything I shoot – the composition is bad, the image quality is poor and I feel bad about the results. I feel like I’m wasting my time. All the build-up ritual and experience has been wasted, and I’ve got a card full of bad memories. I wipe it, and start again.
Truth is, I don’t need new gear. My bank balance, not to mention the Cooper Acres fund, will be far better off for it. It’s the time of year when new stuff is released; the summer is winding up, people get back to work from summer vacation, conference season kicks off, and the holiday season is coming. Photokina is coming, and Canon Expo is also coming. Expect new camera bodies, new lenses and enough megapickles to fill a cinema screen.
Credit card safely tucked away, I’m going to read more. And take more photos. And learn. And try not to be so self-critical.
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