I think I will refer to this the next time someone ask me why I don't take pictures at some event :-)
DagT Sendt fra min iPad > Den 7. okt. 2013 kl. 09:56 skrev Larry Colen <l...@red4est.com>: > > This is somethingt that has been brewing in my mind for a while. I didn't > have time to do more than just spew it out, without editing. And it > was a real challlenge trying to phrase it as "there are people out there > doing a lot more work than you realize", and not come across as "I do > all this stuff for you, what are you going to do for me?". I hope > I succeeded. > > If you are reading this, chances are that I've taken photos of you. I have > nearly 1,600 people on my friends list, and I'm pretty sure it's not because > of my sparkling personality. My social awkwardness is not legendary, but it > is no secret. The reason that most people connect with me on social > networking sites is because I'm one of the people that gets decent photos at > those events where the cell phone photos always look like crap. In just > about any social group there are a few of us, generally three or four, that > you see at the various events, taking photos. > Something like half of the photos ever taken, have been taken in the past > year or two. To a first approximation, everybody now has a camera with them > all the time. You might call it a phone, but it's also a camera. Meanwhile, > the performance of dedicated cameras have improved at the exponential rate > that Gordon Moore noticed several decades ago. So, not only can just about > anyone take a photo at any time, but there's a decent chance that photo will > look OK, or at least the objects in it will probably be recognizable. But in > our various social groups, there are three or four of us who fairly regularly > hear someone admit that their photos don't turn out as well as ours. > There's a dirty secret that the people who make cameras won't tell you. > While cameras have advanced to the point that you no longer need to have a > good grasp of photographic fundamentals to take a pictures that is reasonably > well exposed, and even has subjects in focus, if you don't know your aperture > from a hole in the ground, chances are you won't take many good photos. > Sure, you'll get lucky now and then. Throw enough darts in the general > direction of the dart board and a few of them will hit the bullseye, but > quite frankly, most of your photos will be crap, particularly in anything but > favorable light. > What camera companies will tell you is that to get good photos, you need good > (read expensive) cameras and lenses. This is true to a point. A good > photographer can get beautiful artistic photos with just about any working > camera that you put in their hands, but there are times when you simply need > the right tool for the job. If you want pictures of people dancing in a room > that is too dark to comfortably read in, you are going to need a pretty good > camera body, a decent lens, and in addition to knowing how to use them, > you're going to need a decent computer for processing those photos. You can > get these things on the cheap, relatively speaking, but if you're passionate > about photography chances are that you've spent well over a thousand dollars > on your kit. Actually, chances are that you've spent quite a few times that > on your kit, but if you're creative, you might be able to take and process > good photos in challenging light for under two or three thousand dollars. > So, those people getting better photos than you did so because they spent the > time to learn the basics of photography, and they spent more time practicing, > and they spent a fair chunk of money on decent camera and computer gear. I'm > not even going to start on the time, expense and effort involved with film > and darkroom, I've Been There, Done That, and while it has it's appeal, it is > beyond the scope of this discussion, and possibly even sanity in this day and > age. > These are arguably reasons enough to appreciate the people taking those > photos of you dancing, riding bikes, playing guitar. racing cars or whatever. > But we've barely even started. > If we're taking photos at an event, there are things that we're not doing, > and most of them are the reasons that we started going to those events at the > first place. If it's at a dance, and I'm taking photos, there isn't a pretty > girl in my arms moving to the music. If I'm at a class and taking photos, > I'm missing a lot of what the teacher is saying, because while the teacher is > talking, I'm also looking at the light, thinking about when something > interesting is going to happen, taking care not to disturb class myself and > very little of my brain is left over to absorb what is being taught. > I'm not saying that taking photos isn't fun. It is a lot of fun, or we > wouldn't be doing it on our own time, and giving away the photos for free. > There are a lot of reasons to give them away for free. The big one is that > most of us do this as a way to give back to the community and our friends. > The other reason is that if we tried to sell our photos, we wouldn't get any > money for them anyways, in no small part because we'd be competing against > the people who are giving them away. > But, we aren't done yet. Taking the photos is the easy part. Remember that > I mentioned computers. The difference between crappy photos and decent > photos may be skill and equipment, but the difference between decent photos > and good photos is polishing them up in post processing, and the difference > between good photos and great photos, is spending the time to go through them > and deciding which 90-99% of them to throw away. > If I spend an hour taking photos, and I'm just doing a quick and dirty job to > post them on facebook, I can probably process them in an hour's work at home. > I upload them to the computer, do rough exposure and color correction, > pre-render them so that I can scan through them quickly, take several passes > throwing away the worst ones, and then spend a bit more time, making another > pass through them to throw out all but the best. > LIke I said, for something like facebook, I generally do a quick and dirty, > because most people seem like they'd rather have a decent photo of them doing > something they love, than no photo, and a lot of people would rather have > even an embarrassingly bad photo, than no photo at all. For the serious > photos, I tend to spend as much, or more time, going over the ones that are > left to pick the few really god that make it to the next cut. > So, where you might think that each photo you see posted on facebook only > represents the ten seconds it might take you to pull out your cell phone and > take a snap, even ignoring the time and effort spent hauling the (very > expensive) bag of camera gear around, each photo that you see, actually > represents several minutes of work waiting for the right moment, taking that > photo, and the other then that got thrown away, plus at least that much time, > generally late at night, working on the photos so that the ones you see are > better than pretty decent. > And, if you actually run events, and appreciate having good photos of the > event so people can see how much fun it is, think about ways to make the > people who put the effort in to take those photos feel appreciated. > -- > Larry Colen l...@red4est.com http://red4est.com/lrc > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > PDML@pdml.net > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
