So you are saying that lots of brains and experience dumbs us out when we get a motordrive? Get real. Take a look at all the great football pictures from the 60's. Most game shots were done with early Pentax or Nikon motordrive cameras. You see anything close up from the 50's and 60's and you can bet in most cases it was staged not game film. It actually takes as much or more skill to do action photography as a real photographer as opposed to a hack shooter. Remember you get to see what you are going to shoot very clearly right in front of you. Because it is not shot "in the moment" when time is really critical. We not only have to put ourselves in the right place we have to visualize in our heads the shot or potential shot we want to get. Because it happens too fast in most cases to have the luxury of setting it up perfectly. Heck anybody can take a decent shot when the subject is right in front of them if they remember some basic rules. Try composing a potential shot in your head not knowing whether it will happen or not. Knowing that the moment is so fleeting that your brain can't compose the shot fast enough or it will be gone. So each time frame of the moment can be divided into an almost infinite number of potential shots. But if you shoot by hand you can only get one of those moments per second and it may not be exactly the shot you imagined. At 3 FPS you still miss lots of potential moments happening between the shots. At 10 FPS you miss even less of them. They called it "Life" magazine for a reason. Photographs of things in motion are pictures of life. Photographs of things staged or posed are just pictures of things, be they living beings or inanimate objects. There is a reason why magazine photographers use motordrives in a model shoot. They let the model move just giving pointers. They generally shoot as fast as they can. Because the movement of features, hair, and clothing are what gives the shots the illusion of life. And to do that they have to continually shoot. Portraits on the other hand are not pictures of life. If done well they are pictures of how life has effected the subject. And that is art also. Just not my kind of art. If Ansel Adams shot a picture of a gorgeous Western landscape I'd consider the picture full of the majesty of creation, but not of life. On the otherhand the same landscape with a thundering herd of wild horses moving across it I would consider a picture of life. And if I have to use a motordrive camera instead of an 8x10 plate camera to get my shot successfully then what I do is no less photographic art that what he did (or my brother does now). I've had a 35mm camera in my hands continually for almost 40 years. I'm the son of a late superb amateur travel photographer (and WWII photographer when he wasn't shooting). And the brother of a full time working pro who has published 2 books of his own and teaches his art. So I have some idea what constitutes good photo art. You should tag along sometime when we walk through somebody else's show critiquing their photos. And I'm not perfect. My brother still thinks I need more people in my selections. Kent Gittings
-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Shel Belinkoff Sent: Monday, December 31, 2001 11:54 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: The brute force school of photography There are those who strive to get ~an~ image, and those that seek to get ~the~ image. Bill Owens wrote: > > Yep, Wheatfield (or is it Snowfield this time of year) is absolutely > correct. IMNSHO, those that rely on motor drives are photographic > technicians. Those that rely on their brain and experience are > photographers. -- Shel Belinkoff mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://home.earthlink.net/~belinkoff/ - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org . ********************************************************************** This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify the system manager. This footnote also confirms that this email message has been swept by MIMEsweeper for the presence of computer viruses. www.mimesweeper.com ********************************************************************** - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
