Don’t Be Lazy – Think beyond “Photoshop will fix it”

AS a photographer over many years I have seen many changes in the photographic world like others have my age. The younger generation of photographers have tools at their disposal that my general never had and those before my generation and yet……. my generation still took great pictures and those before my generation..

As time goes on I’m getting very tired of hearing ” Photoshop will fix it” Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not against software that helps us in what we do but I very concerned that this generation now is ever more relying on the technology to fix mistakes by the photographer that shouldn’t have been made if they were up on their craft.

When we rely on a source to fix the issue, how would we cope when that source is taken away from you? I have said this before over and over again, if you treated your digital camera as a film base camera, your photography would improve. You would have to actually stop and think about what you take before you actually take the picture. You wouldn’t take a 1000 shots of the one subject .

The technology that we have at our disposal is outstanding, I’m not against using that at all but what concerns me is that as time goes on, we are becoming lazy and we are losing the fundamentals of photography.

I’m not living in the past, I do embrace what is before us but I never use what we have today to ” fix it”.

Below are a series of pictures taken from my Limited Edition Collection. All of the pictures in this blog are film based. They are taken on a large panoramic camera, one capture, shot on Fuji Velvia film rated at ISO 25.

On a roll of film for the camera that I use, I get 4 pictures, that is all. So no room to take 100’s of pictures. If I did, it would be a very expensive exercise and would send me broke!!

The exposures are made by using my hand held sekonic light metre that I still use today. Its 25 years old and still works.These prints are just over 1.5 metres wide are one capture, not stitched together.

Given that the ISO is rated at 25 , it means my shutter speeds are going to be extremely slow. The quality from this camera is outstanding. There is a digital form of this camera but the cost is prohibitive for myself.

What I love about using this camera is that it forces you to take the time to take the shot. It forces you to really sit down, reflect and look at what is the best angle to shoot for the scene. There is nothing like the feeling, having the film base camera set up, and squeezing down the shutter cable release and hearing that shutter slowly opening and closing. I say slowly as remember what I said earlier, my exposures run into the seconds which means when I’m using this camera, I really have to have windless days or know the subject.

In the waterfall shot above, you’ll see the ferns on the right hand side that are blurred.It was a still day but the water tumbling over the edge created the small wind on the ferns.There are a few times when you have no control over the wind, or breeze that is created by other factors.

If we want to improve as photographers, we need not be lazy in our approach to photography. We shouldn’t allow the convenience of the modern era of photography to make us lazy. Laziness promotes a sloppy approach to photography and laziness creates a non learning environment.It takes away the thinking component in photography and causes us to fail in understanding light and composition.

You may say I’m over reacting and you are certainly entitled to your point of view.I get to travel around and speak at various photographic clubs etc and what I observe concerns me. There is a great gap between those who do know and those who don’t.

I have a challenge for you. The next time you come to a subject that you really like, no matter what is, pretend that your digital camera is a film base camera and that you have a roll of 36 film in it. You have 36 shots, what will you take?