Then the smiles of innocence these glittering pearls
Amidst a sea of men they shimmer away
Like shards of light
On a summers day
A photographer is like a painter but with a canvass that is far far bigger. How big a canvass you ask? Well as big as the world really. Imagine that! There is nothing out there that is out of bounds save for the reach of your imagination! And nothing should be. So jump and jump as high as you can, even to outer-space if you can. There are of course different genres of photography: fashion, wedding, macro, portrait and landscape to name but a few; but few are as compelling to me as documentary photography. One can describe a place that one has seen, with words; with beautifully constructed precise prose that cuts like a knife and makes the reader feel as if they are sitting amongst it all; but for sheer impact nothing beats a well composed photograph speaking a 1,000 words simultaneously.
Great photographs are those that, like crystalline prose, transport you inside the image; where you can almost smell the stink and hear the sounds and feel the bugs twitching under your feet. That’s what travel and documentary photography should always strive for; teleportation. Teleporting the viewer to the very midst of the chaos and beauty of the far away places you have visited. Allowing people to glimpse the exotic; to smell the foreign; to render the sublime. How do you do that?
Well, there are 2 prongs to photography that are both equally important. There is the technical side of things such as shutter speeds, apertures and depth of field and learning the cameras many functions and buttons and what they do. Then there is the aesthetic side of choosing what to photograph, how to compose the subject in the viewfinder and what the image means. What is the image communicating? What is it saying? The technical aspects can be mastered with practice. The aesthetic elements can also to an extent be learnt but they however require a nurturing of an inner sensitivity to the world; an awareness and appreciation of the poetry, the physical poetry that is out there.
These lessons will attempt to teach both the technical aspects and also give guidance on how to nurture the aesthetic side. This is nothing short of learning how to see the world all over again. For too many of us see the world under a foggy veil, dampened senses and withering appreciation. Without either on your side (technical and aesthetics) your photography will not rise to the heights of self expression that it is capable of. It was Orson Wells who said that “a camera is the eye inside the head of a poet” – so we must all then become poets. Poets with cameras that is!
There is poetry everywhere you turn
Embers of life may wither away and burn
But the poetry of life will always remain
In the images bursting forth
From inside your brain!
There is poetry everywhere you turn
Embers of life may wither away and burn
But the poetry of life will always remain
In the images bursting forth
From inside your brain!
But firstly…You don’t have an expensive SLR camera does it matter?
No. SLR (single lens reflex) cameras differ from ‘point and shoots’ in that they have interchangeable lens, give total control over the photographic process, have quicker focusing thus allowing you to capture a moment that a slower point and shoot might miss. SLR image quality is also superior thanks to inherently better optics and sensors. However, many point and shoots nowadays are so good that they feature in the kit bags of many professional photographers. These have professional style features, are cheaper then SLR’s and are more versatile because they are smaller and have a single lens that covers a wide focal range.
If you are thinking of purchasing a point and shoot camera then select one which has ‘aperture and shutter priority’ modes, a focal range (zoom range) that is at-least 30mm on the minimum end and has (for reasons that will be explained later) no more then 10 mega pixels. Since we are on the subject of mega pixels I just want to educate you on a common misconception: contrarary to popular opinion number of pixels has little bearing on quality! – More mega pixels simply means that the image can be enlarged to a greater size. In-fact (let me let you in on a dirty little secret) for point and shoot cameras (not SLRs) more mega pixels generally means inferior image quality ;-)
But the point to take home is that a camera at the end of the day is a tool. The human imagination sets the ultimate limits. You can take wonderful pictures with a simple point and shoot if you know how to use it, if you are aware of its limitations and if you flex those creative muscles. A case example is Henri Cartier-Bresson, one of the world’s foremost street photographers who used to walk around with a basic fixed lens (no zoom) film camera. So as long as your images speak and say something meaningful and are compelling to look at, it doesn't matter what equipment you use.
