I remember trying to photograph my friend Christian about one year after I got my first camera. I moved slow, making sure that little needle inside (light meter) was lined up just right. Check the shutter speed. Ok. Got it. Check the aperture. Ok. It’s where it needs to be. Then focus. By that time, Christian had got up and walked away. Christian’s cousin, Trent Nelson, is photojournalist and so Chris was used to that kind of photographer. Moving quickly, making a record of things as they unfold.
Sometimes making a picture is like hitting a fast ball. The first time you play baseball, you don’t have to try and hit a pitch that’s coming at you at 100 mph. Instead, you first hit off a T. Then you try hitting and underhand pitch. And with enough practice and some time later, you’re knocking it out of the park at any speed.
So now I’m a wedding photographer and things move pretty quickly. It helps to get to the point in making pictures where the camera is just an extension of your brain. That what you see, can, in an instant, be recorded for the history books (aka – the wedding album). At that point, fiddling with shutter speed and camera dials means the bride is already down the isle and you missed the kiss.
But anyone can master that part of photography in a relatively short amount of time and then the question is why some pictures are more successful than others. Making pictures that truly sing, pictures that move people to tears, pictures with soul, require more that just a properly exposed image. Yesterday, on his blog, David Alan Harvey, one of the world’s great photographers wrote about the importance of connection to the subject here. You’ll draw your own conclusions, but for me, I read that blog post and think that it’s hard to make a good photograph of another person if you don’t or can’t make a connection with that person in some way. That’s a skill seperate from making pictures, but a skill the good pictures can’t do without.
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