Anyone with a digital camera today is a photographer. Photography has become just as easy as seeing a subject in the viewfinder or the LCD screen of a camera and clicking a button to capture the exposure. The automatic mode, now available in all digital cameras, is a lifesaver. There is no need of shifting the settings away from Automatic to take good pictures. The only effort on the photographer’s part is to point the camera at the subject and the camera automatically makes all the calculations and takes the picture that the photographer can later brag as her work. ;) Truth be told it’s not her work at all; it’s the work of the physicist who designed the camera she used.
There is a difference between good photography and great photography. There’s a reason why no one would pay a penny for my photographs while there are people on photo.net whose photographs are earning money in thousands. I could hand one of those high-earning photographers my camera and give the same subject, their photograph would be something I could’ve never imagined clicking myself. I don’t say that I strive to be like them (cuz chances are next to none that I’d be able to) but I surely want to learn what they know theoretically speaking.
Almost all great photographs possess:
- attention to detail
- photographic skill
… but what makes one photo better than the other is the creative aspect … the pushing of limits … the personally unique expression that is more than just documentation …
For the creative exposures to occur, it is necessary to understand how photographs happen. Pati (husband) has been insisting on me ever since I got my new camera that I need to learn the ‘physics’ behind photography. Me being me – the eternal evader – I haven’t really listened to him … and started dabbling with the basics that ended up being routed in physics anyhow. :| I hate it when he is right but I must admit it that he is right. Without the knowledge of physics, we might learn to get the ‘correct‘ exposure with trial and error strategy but we’ll never learn how to get the ‘creative‘ exposure as we perceive it every time we press the shutter button. The consistency of creativity is the goal if one wants to pursue photography as a hobby or a career.
Even though we have digital cameras and can afford deleting unwanted pictures, a photographer with experience and know-how of his camera never needs to take a picture twice to get it right. She gets it right the first time … every time she clicks it … consistently.
And that, my dear friends, should be our goal.
In future lessons, we’ll learn to move away from the comfort zone of Automatic shooting and venture into the world that real photographers have long known.
