Picture Taker or Story Teller?
When a lot of photographers (including myself) find something they want to take a picture of they pull their camera up to their eye, compose the shot, adjust their camera settings, press the shutter button down, and look at the LCD screen on the back of their camera to see if it was properly exposed. Then they take a few more shots with tweaks to their camera settings and move on. Later when they dump it on their hard drive and pull the images up, they’re disappointed that what they are viewing isn’t what they saw before they took the picture. Out of frustration, they start searching the internet for a better camera or lens. When their new gear arrives and they take it out on a shoot and come back with the same disappointing results they get even more frustrated and stick their expensive new gear in a camera bag for months.
With new cameras and faster, sharper lenses coming out everyday, its easy to get hung up on having the best and latest gear and forgetting the reasons why you became a photographer in the first place. Being a photographer is more than just pointing your camera at a subject and pressing the shutter button down. Anyone with a camera can do that. Great photographers don’t get hung up on the latest and greatest gear, they tell a story with their camera.
The next time you go out on a shoot, find a subject, spend some time with it, and ask it a question.
What’s over that hill? Where is that duck swimming to? Is that really huge, muscle-bound man going to hit me in the face when I take his picture?
Once your subject answers your question then you can pull your camera up to your eye, compose your shot, adjust your camera settings, press the shutter button down, look at the LCD screen on the back of your camera, dump it on your hard drive, and view the image and smile.
Pretend your camera is a pen. Its your job as a photograher to tell the story of your subject with that pen. How are you going to write it?
Author Info: Geoffrey Hudson
While as a child growing up watching Tom and Jerry, I wanted to be a cartoonist but as years went on I learned that outside of stick figures, l couldn't draw very well.
In high school I wanted to be a musician but after picking up a guitar I realized I was lacking one crucial aspect, rhythm.
In college I wanted to be a video game designer but after countless classes of writing code, it gave me a headache.
After college I dabbled in video for a while. I made a few short films, did some wedding and highlight videos but decided it was too costly and time consuming.
In January of 2008 I purchased my first DSLR camera. The moment I first pressed down the shutter button I fell in love and haven't put it down since. Being able to tell a story and capture a memory that will last a lifetime is what I have been looking for my entire life.
I decided to take my new passion of photography to the next level and started a business in hopes of telling the stories of other people and giving them memories they can cherish the rest of their lives.
Picture perfect! Thanks for sharing…I think you over exposed this idea in a good way, and shed some light on true passion in what we do.
Aspire to inspire!
Most of the time it doesn’t matter what kind of camera you use, it matters more who is behind the camera.
Very true. I’ve seen a lot of great images taken with a simple point-and-shoot camera.
Now if people would just learn how to charge for their photography and not offer $50 sessions and give away their work (in forms of hi-res files for dirt cheap.)
People are ending up working for below min wage and don’t seem to care… all because they are afraid to put value into their work and charge people for art.. Not snapshots.
I’m sorry to say, but most photographers I’ve seen are just people taking snapshots and want to be considered artists. Especially with the digital revolution it’s quite easy to get great looking photos with no real ability whatsoever. This does afford those with talent to take it to the next level and their are photographers who I know that do reach the artist level. The majority I know are not.
When I am going to pay someone to come take a photos at an event, I’m not paying for an artist to come in and make masterpieces. I’m paying someone who has equipment to come use it for a period of time. The amount should be based on that and I should get the hard copies in the end. I’m not paying for someone to come in and get those couple perfect shots that take time to setup and get the lighting perfect, pose perfect and such. I want you to take snapshots. And going to your Olan Mills type office where you have everything setup already where you run a person through all the standard poses is not what I’m talking about.
To give you an idea of what I consider of artistic value.
http://www.overexposedblog.com/blog/2010/8/18/macys-on-state-street.html
Also I’m not saying there isn’t artistic value in other shots that don’t have prep work or any of that, but most of those are not someone paying you for it as well.
Sorry, the whole “all photographers are artists” thing is one of those button pushing issues of mine.