Photography is the display of the effects or relationship of light. This is a very simple thing. A photographer would then be the one who captures and displays that graph of light. This may also seem fairly simple.
Ansel Adams, one of Americas most popular and respected photographers knew intimately what this meant.
It was, to him, not just about capturing the light but then to manipulate the light until he achieved a perfect representation of what was in his minds eye.
This meant taking the film negative, which he considered his canvas, and then painting with light until he was satisfied with the image that he created. He wouldn't consider taking a picture, dropping the negative off to an unknown high volume printer, taking the resulting images and selling them. Not only would the product be completely bland, it would ruin his reputation amongst the public and his peers.
On the other side of this, Henri Cartier Bresson, felt that too much manipulation of the image after it was captured was a lie. Though his images were, as Adam's, not completely truthful, Bresson tried his best to act as the ultimate observer. He would plan and wait, sometimes waiting hours for all of the elements to come together in that synergistic moment that had never before and never would happen again.
He captured life. Still, He was a master of light. And even though he would strive to capture pure life, he and his printer would dodge and burn the image to achieve the proper light and emotion that Bresson intended.
We have then two views on this, the view that the release of the shutter is only half of the creation of the piece and the view that the release of the shutter is the entire creation of the image. Which is right? Which would be wrong? It's obvious, by their success, both in life and after death that neither is wrong, nor right.
The fact is, they were both masters of what they did and masters of the light that they used to express their art. They were true photographers.
These two images were captured as I spent a few days in New Orleans last year. I tried to both capture an emotion but to give an additional depth to the overall image by using some post process darkroom techniques.
The problem that I have, which has recently made me ill, is this; people claiming to be photographers, selling this premise to others and delivering absolute garbage. They are neither masters of light nor emotion. The life they capture is often trivial and meaningless. The light they capture is unbalanced and murky.
With cameras becoming so obtainable and the image quality becoming so great, it has opened the doors to a myriad of people who assume they can drop a few hundred dollars for a camera and lens, take pictures at a wedding burn the images to disc, send those images to the client, and make a few dollars, simply because they think they can. This is not just a small problem it is an infectious plague that is devaluing the art of photography and taking the market into a dark place.
Any web search will pull up hundreds of people who can take pictures burn them right to a cd and give them all to you for a ridiculously low fee. It would be like assuming that the knowledge, education, and skills of a trained chef are embodied in a fry cook.
Now consider this, people are trusting the memories of the most important events of their life to people with the knowledge, skills, talents and abilities of, that fry cook. They have no knowledge of composition, lighting, depth, or exposure. People are paying for someone just to come and take pictures. They are not paying for a photographer to come capture and create images. They are paying for someone to flip a burger not craft a fine steak. Only one thing comes from this- regret.
I have searched the Internet and found, even local photographers, displaying images with horrible lighting, exposure, lack of depth and lack of emotion. They use tag words like beautiful, timeless, elegant, unique, candid, creative, fun, professional in complete misrepresentation.
Take a few minutes and do some searches, it's beyond laughable.
The adage is true and I hear it repeatedly 'You do get what you pay for'. The most important times in your life and the memories of those times can't be entrusted to someone based on a cheap fee and a disc with all the digital files. What good are a thousand pictures if they are useless? We have been so inundated with people calling us to fix a disc full of sub par images that someone else did that it has become shameful.
When we consider what this whole photography thing is all about and we consider the impact photography has on our families for generations, can we honestly believe that we can bargain with and seek to find discounts for it. Do you really want your children and grandchildren to remember the love that you shared at your wedding through the eyes of someone who was completely inexperienced, who had nothing invested in your memories and who considered those memories only as a quick way to make a buck? Do you think they would have anywhere near the impact or importance of the images captured by someone that invests all their time, talents, skills and heart into those images. I hardly think so. Yet people daily try to scrimp on the only thing their children and grandchildren will have of them.
Don't short change your memories.
Photography is one of the most powerful mediums of art and history that we have. Don't participate in the devaluation of this tremendous work.
1 comment:
Thanks a zillion for posting this. :o)
Post a Comment