On Cameras

I don’t like to talk about cameras, except when I like to talk about cameras, if you know what I mean? No? Well, one of the worst things we, as human beings, can do is to look at a photograph and the first thing we think of is what kind of camera was that taken with? You don’t go to a museum and look at a Guaguin or a Van Gogh and the first thing you think of is what kind of paintbrush did they use? No. First you should let the image wash over you, try to experience it on a non-verbal level. Then you might ask what does it mean, or what was the photographer trying to say? Then you might consider the interplay of light and shadow or the relationship between colors. But what kind of camera was used? It just doesn’t matter.

As a photographer, the most important thing is to be able to see. If you can’t see it definitely doesn’t matter what kind of camera you have. The shot above demonstrates what I’m talking about. Jackson Square is tourist central in New Orleans. There was a line of tourists waiting to get to the spot I took this photo, so this scene from this perspective is very likely the most common photograph taken in New Orleans. Yet it’s possible I saw something no one else has ever seen. Just about any camera could have captured a photo very much like that. But not just anyone could see it.

The standard advice for young photographers, at least for photojournalism or documentary, is to get a camera with a 35mm (Full frame equivalent) lens and use that exclusively for a year or so. That is excellent advice, and I did it. Constraints are important teachers, especially these days when there are so few of them. Since then I regularly impose constraints on whatever I’m doing. There was a year where I used flash in just about every situation and learned not just how to use it at a much higher level, but also when it could work and when it couldn’t.

Of course sometimes you need a specialized camera. Had I tried to take the above photo with a Leica, for example, it would have been very costly. So while it’s generally true that the best camera is the one you have in your hands, that’s not always the case. If you want to be a wildlife photographer, as another example, that 35mm lens isn’t going to do you much good.

Another common piece of advice for young photographers is to develop your own look and keep doing it so that whenever anyone sees one of your photos, they can instantly recognize that it’s you. That’s true with a lot of famous photographers. Sebastião Salgado, Bruce Gildon, Martin Parr, many others, are useful examples. For better or worse, that is not advice I am capable of taking. Eventually I get bored with whatever I’m doing and start thinking about new challenges, or maybe revisiting old challenges with more knowledge and skills than I had the first time around.

That’s where I’m at these days. It seems I’ve done about all I can with the monotone landscapes and the iPhone experiment was a total failure and an easily predicted one to make it worse.

But it did get me thinking again about color and perspective. That combined with the fact that I’m going to need to make a little money off photography soon resulted in me getting a medium format camera with a normal lens. That’s a commercially viable choice, but a very challenging one artistically.

The medium format and normal lens force one to take more formal composition choices and also allow for much more complicated compositions. Note the swimmers in the bottom right corner of the above photo. The medium format and normal lens allow for a much higher level of difficulty than you get with a 35mm or wider, and a camera that’s not sharp on the edges.

Beyond that, it’s much more difficult to get any kind of “wow” factor with a normal perspective that it is with an extreme wide angle or highly compressed telephoto shot. Photographs with a normal perspective tend to look boring at a glance, or on a small screen or print. Nevertheless, I’m committed. For the next year or so we’ll see what I can do with it.