Digital technology has taken over the photography world.
The benefits are enormous, and advances in cameras and
software have quickly overcome the weaknesses of early
digital photography. But are modern photographers living up
to the potential of their new digital cameras?
As the owner of a gallery, I have many conversations with
digital photographers, and I am beginning to see problems,
not with digital photography, but with the mindset it seems
to have created. And I fear that photography as an art form
may be the poorer for it.
One of the benefits that make digital cameras so attractive
is the ability to see your results immediately, and delete
a photo if you are not happy with it, at zero cost. Gone
are the days of waiting until you finish a roll of film,
then facing the expense of developing and printing before
you get to see your results. With digital photography, you
can take a shot without fear: if it doesn't work, just
delete it and try again.
Therein lies my biggest worry about digital photography.
The ease with which a photographer can erase a mistake has
taken away the need to think about what they are doing.
Let's face it, if you take enough shots of the same
subject, eventually you will get it right accidentally.
When film was king, the delay in seeing your results, and
the expense connected to each exposure, made it important
to get it right, or at least try to do so. When a
photographer had to wait until days later to view their
results, the opportunity to try again had usually passed.
Consequently, it was essential to really learn how to use
your camera, and to put creative thought into every
exposure.
Of course there was no such thing as a 100% success rate,
and plenty of film was wasted, but with concentration and
self-discipline, a good film photographer had a right to
expect more hits than misses from each roll of film.
These days I meet digital photographers who are immensely
proud of a good image, even if they had to delete 50 failed
attempts from their memory card along the way. In these
cases, the question needs to be asked: was the digital
photographer's eventual success due to good photography or
good luck? Moreover, had they learned anything in the
process? Presented with the same situation again, would
they need to take another 50 photos to get it right the
next time?
There are many situations where that approach is simply not
good enough. In my field of nature photography, many
opportunities last no more than a few seconds. Birds fly
away, clouds cover the sun, the colours of a sunset change.
Fleeting moments are not rare in photography, in fact for
some artists they are what photography is all about.
So how does the random snapper cope in these situations? I
suspect in many cases the tendency is to blame the bird for
flying away, or blame the digital camera for not doing its
job properly. The notion that the photo should be easy for
someone who knows what they are doing would not compute.
Why? Because the sheer convenience of digital photography,
with its automatic features and ease of deletion, does not
encourage us to actually learn how to use the camera.
Imaging software is part and parcel of the photography
industry; I accept that. In fact, to get a truly
high-quality print, even the best digital photographer has
to do a little 'work' on an image from time to time. But
computer wizardry should never replace skill with a camera.
Sadly, these days many people are relying on software to
fix their mistakes, instead of learning to take better
photos.
I look at it this way: time spent fixing up a mistake using
software ' minutes or hours. Time spent getting it right in
the first place ' about 1/500 second.
If you have a good digital camera, I urge you switch it to
manual and learn how to use it. Not much has changed since
the old days. The main things you need to learn are still
aperture, shutter speed, light and composition. Practice
has never been cheaper, and learning from your mistakes has
never been easier. All it takes is patience and
self-discipline.
Go on ' make your camera proud!
----------------------------------------------------
Andrew Goodall has made his living from nature photography
for over 20 years. See his images at
http://www.naturesimage.com.au Andrew's ebooks "Photography
in Plain English" and "Every Picture Tells A Story" have
helped thousands of beginners learn the art and skills of
nature photography. Find them at
http://www.naturesimage.com.au/page/25/default.asp
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