David,
Welcome home. And congratulations on surviving your personal
life.
Yep,
Looking at everything with rectangular boundaries and feeling
the responsibility to document and create the best way to capture the
image can be quite a burden. I pretty much have traveled every inch of
my journeys with a camera. In fact most of my travel days were paid for
through documentary assignments. After my boys were born, I remember
taking a trip to New Hampshire without a camera in an effort to be with
my family without archiving the event in photographs. It wasn't that
natural at the time!
I used to keep a log and note light, time and weather conditions
if I did not have the right equipment and return at another date. As
the primary means of display was always slides the limitation was
horizontal rectangles to keep the screen full. Man, do I miss slides.
In most of the presentations I see for case studies or architecture
awards the image quality is so poor it is embarrassing for the trade.
Nice crisp 35 mm slides, rear projected in a dark room with a two or
four projector dissolve, synchronized to music.... Nothing better.
The thing I love about the digital is the forgiveness of the low
light slow shudder speed. Many of the shots that I once would not
attempt, as the wonderful ability of film to capture the contrast in
turn did not allow informal quick capture, I now take regularly. But I
miss crisp full depth of field sharpness. I also miss kodachrome 25,
the best film I think I ever used. A film you could almost paint with
at low speeds.
Oh, I also like how my new digital camera has a default sound of an SLR
when you take the shot!
Best,
Leland
-----Original Message-----
From: "Let us not speak foul in folly!" - ][<en Phollit
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of david
west
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2003 3:52 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Conspicuous photography
> Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 22:28:43 -0500
> From: "Donald B. White"
> <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Conspicuous photography
>
Having taken pictures seriously from the age of 14, I
am uncomfortable with the amount of attention a camera attracts.
Sometimes I have preferred to make mental notes and write something
later. They can't see me memorizing. But a picture is worth 1,000 words
and is a great assist to memory. The silence and low-light performance
of my little digital camera helps it to remain inconspicuous, although
digicams are still unusual enough to attract attention. Quite often,
though, people are not aware I have been taking pictures.
I tend to take it with me a lot and take a lot more
pictures than at any time since I stopped having my
own darkroom.
-------------------------
Don
I agree with your observations.
I've floated in and out of various forms of
recreational photography, mainly with a 35mm Olympus
OM-10 (because it was the lightest standard 35mm at
the time I bought it). Spent a decade concentrating on landscape
photography (coinciding with my bushwalking, field science, botany stage
in life), and most of the past decade trying to be an architectural
photographer. Since giving in to the digital push last March, I've
barely touched my 35mm. Don't like the digital for high quality images;
don't like the limited battery life; don't like the inability to change
lenses. What I love is the ease of concealment, the ability to take
photos without putting the camera to your face, so you can maintain eye
contact with the subject. Used to hate taking photos of people, because
it was so hard to get them natural. Now, it is still hard, but there is
a greater chance of unobtrusively getting a relaxed image. Don't think
I'll ever become a serious people photographer, but I sure think there
will be more people in my photos from now on.
On the alternatives to photography, I experimented
early last year on a 4 day mountain bike trip in the
Snowy Mountains with not taking my camera. Instead, I
took my notebook, and tried to capture the special
images and moments in poetry. Some of it worked, some
of it didn't, but I sure as hell remember that I
wasn't forever concentrating on trying to look at the
landscape in terms of rectangular boundaries.
Cheers
david
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