Quoting Graywolf <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > 'sokay, Bill. There is a lot of that on the list (GRIN). > > The point I made, which everyone seemed to miss, was that really good > photographers don't make a lot of worthless photos, and hardly ever screw > up > technically. I guess most of those who answered do both, but think they are > > really good photographers. > > There is a guy over on apug.com (analog photographers users group) who's > tag > line is "You buy a camera and you are a photographer, you buy a piano and > you > own a piano".
OH, I like that line!!! That's a keeper in the same file as "what a great meal; you must have really good pots!" > His point is of course that buying a camera does not make you > a > photographer any more than buying a piano makes you a concert pianist. With > the > camera or piano, some instruction, and a lot of directed practice you can > become > as good a photographer or pianist as you are capable of. But both require a > lot > of work. There is also something to be said about player pianos and > automatic > cameras, but I think that would be obvious to anyone who thinks about it. > > You do not learn to paint by slapping paint on a piece of canvas and > tossing it > away. You do not learn photography by snapping the shutter and tossing it > away. > You try and do the best you can. Then you look at it and analyze it and try > to > figure out how you could have done it better. You go out and try that. Then > you > compare the results. Based on that you repeat the process over and over. > Eventually you get to where what you want and what you get is nearly one > for one. > > Has anyone here seen the contacts of Alfred Eisenstaedt's shoot of his > wife's > (Georga O'Keffe) hands? He shot three rolls of almost identical photos. Any > one > of those shots would look great on the wall. None of them were "I wonder > how > this will turn out" shots. When you look closely though you notice none of > them > were actually identical. He was trying to fine tune what he knew was a > great > photo into the perfect photo. Totally the antithesis of the MG technique. MG=Machine Gun, I'm assuming? > The advice to shoot lots of film is for people who shoot two rolls of film > a > year and can not seem to improve. Anyone who is shooting a roll or two (or > > equivalent) a week and not improving is not working at it. Shooting a > thousand > shots a week in the hope that one will be decent makes you every bit as > capable > as a wall mounted surveillance camera. I recently gave a lot of thought to how digital has changed my shooting style -- I wasn't entirely happy about the direction I was going -- and decided that although I was getting ready to buy another memory card (which I needed because I have started to use RAW more) I would, deliberately, NOT purchase the largest card I could afford but restrict myself to no more than what I felt I really *needed*. I want to arrest my own march toward "machine- gunning" and so find a balance between that and shooting enough to properly cover a subject and improve my technique. Your post has put the very issue I was considering into excellent words. ERNR
