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I won't name the guy, but we had a presentation recently in my club from a guy who knows his stuff in photography, FRPS, runs workshops and judges and lots of success in exhibitions. The quality of his prints was exceptional, beautifully home printed and the composition in each picture was spot on. Made it so interesting for me as so many shots were of people, 'social documentary', travel orientated in a style sort of National Geographic, Sunday magazines etc.
Part of me felt inspired, part disappointed. The guys enthusiasm for photography and 'get out there and do it NOW' at pensionable age was admirable. Clearly he did. Many of the portraits were taken in rooms under mixed lighting, almost none using fill flash or reflector (where I would have thought it was needed) with the final prints presented perfectly and carefully worked with controlled highlights and detailed shadows. It was the last bit that made me realise that whilst I had some of the shots, I hadn't got the skills to milk the digital image to printed perfection. Not only that, I realised that I didn't have the skills at an advanced level to seamlessly manipulate and move/clone things in the image to get to the perfect final result. In fact part of me was also disappointed that being mostly a street photographer generally averse to much image manipulation was suprised to find comments like 'I had to clone the eyes (or face) from this image to that' so as to get it all about right. Mostly I thought many of these images were 'as taken'. However I actually agreed in the end that I had to move away from settling for almost final result in camera to accepting the making the final image in computer to a greater extent than I previously considered acceptable. I must stress though that this is still a million miles away from the massively photoshopped computer art that seems to be prevelant in the more advanced circles of club photography and exhibitions. His images looked totally natural and professional.
The final point was the equipment. Although he used a full frame Nikon with a good low light ability, his lenses were very modest and lightweight. In fact his main lens was the much maligned Nikon 24-120 f3.5-5.6 VR. Read any test report and this is considered one of the worst Nikon lenses and berated for distortion and being soft. The pictures at A3 were fantastic quality and sharp Door frames and windows straight. We sometimes get on this bandwagon of having 3 tons of equipment, arguements over prime vs zoom, poo pooing consumer class stuff... these images were spot on. I really will give some of my lesser, smaller and lighter equipment a thorough workout and find out what it is capable of.
So, whats the point of this diatribe. I think I just met one of the most influential people so far in my photographic life. I realise that despite winning some competitions and selling pictures, I haven't yet learnt what is capable from both my equipment and the digital image. I need to learn more myself to improve my abilities to cope with the images I am capturing. I also learnt from him and others I have seen that a lifetime of photography even as a hobby can take you all over the world in search of images and interesting things. Of course it's also a good time to think with about 15 years to go I need a shed load of money to enjoy travelling and lots of photography in retirement. Thanks for reading...sorry if it was boring!
Part of me felt inspired, part disappointed. The guys enthusiasm for photography and 'get out there and do it NOW' at pensionable age was admirable. Clearly he did. Many of the portraits were taken in rooms under mixed lighting, almost none using fill flash or reflector (where I would have thought it was needed) with the final prints presented perfectly and carefully worked with controlled highlights and detailed shadows. It was the last bit that made me realise that whilst I had some of the shots, I hadn't got the skills to milk the digital image to printed perfection. Not only that, I realised that I didn't have the skills at an advanced level to seamlessly manipulate and move/clone things in the image to get to the perfect final result. In fact part of me was also disappointed that being mostly a street photographer generally averse to much image manipulation was suprised to find comments like 'I had to clone the eyes (or face) from this image to that' so as to get it all about right. Mostly I thought many of these images were 'as taken'. However I actually agreed in the end that I had to move away from settling for almost final result in camera to accepting the making the final image in computer to a greater extent than I previously considered acceptable. I must stress though that this is still a million miles away from the massively photoshopped computer art that seems to be prevelant in the more advanced circles of club photography and exhibitions. His images looked totally natural and professional.
The final point was the equipment. Although he used a full frame Nikon with a good low light ability, his lenses were very modest and lightweight. In fact his main lens was the much maligned Nikon 24-120 f3.5-5.6 VR. Read any test report and this is considered one of the worst Nikon lenses and berated for distortion and being soft. The pictures at A3 were fantastic quality and sharp Door frames and windows straight. We sometimes get on this bandwagon of having 3 tons of equipment, arguements over prime vs zoom, poo pooing consumer class stuff... these images were spot on. I really will give some of my lesser, smaller and lighter equipment a thorough workout and find out what it is capable of.
So, whats the point of this diatribe. I think I just met one of the most influential people so far in my photographic life. I realise that despite winning some competitions and selling pictures, I haven't yet learnt what is capable from both my equipment and the digital image. I need to learn more myself to improve my abilities to cope with the images I am capturing. I also learnt from him and others I have seen that a lifetime of photography even as a hobby can take you all over the world in search of images and interesting things. Of course it's also a good time to think with about 15 years to go I need a shed load of money to enjoy travelling and lots of photography in retirement. Thanks for reading...sorry if it was boring!
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