I have a lot of cameras; at last count I have about a dozen, and seven have interchangeable lenes with six different lens mounts. But I only have two lenses – maybe three at the very most.
In four of the six systems that I use, a short telephoto in the 85-105mm range is my primary lens, although most of the time I also have one in the standard-wide 35-40mm range as well. In the other two formats I favour a lens in the 35-40mm range, but I have short telephotos for them as well. Technically, yes, it actually works out to being about eighteen different lenses, but fifteen of them are primes that fall into those two narrow bands.
Today I was reading about the latest American Mars rover that's recently been launched to explore our neighbour. It carries two cameras, both equipped with prime lenses. One is a 34mm wide angle, and the other is a 100mm short telephoto. Smart people, NASA.
Comments, questions, thoughts? You can find me on Twitter or via e-mail.
2011-12-19
2011-12-10
Taking Control
I've been thinking a lot about control recently. If there's one thing that I've never been accused of, it's being too whimsical – I usually hear words like "precise" or "clinical", and they're not always meant as a compliment. This is, perhaps, why I'm more inclined to photograph products than portraits: fine detail and small adjustments in pursuit of my vision comes more naturally than spontaneity and improvisation.
Digital cameras suit me perfectly. The "Lakefill" images that I photographed over the summer, and are nearing completion as a folio and prints now, were taken with some moderately high-end digital gear and is almost certainly the best of my personal work. It's clean, crisp, and detailed.
But over the past couple of years I've been building up a collection of film cameras. My relationship with film is very different from digital; while I'm one of those photographers who doesn't look to fundamentally change an image in post-prcessing, with film I'm willing to accept "character" and imperfections that I would never tolerate from a digital camera. Not that I don't seek perfection in the equipment that I use to begin with – my winter and spring trips to Coney Island were done with a Hasselblad and a Zeiss rangefinder and lenses – but seeing the negative as a physical thing gives a certain authority to their initial state that all-digital capture lacks.
The series that I've been working with most recently is taking that even farther. Instead of trying to exercise control over every part of the image, my approach has been to set up certain conditions and then guide the process. Taken with a film camera, these are long exposures that are zone focused and taken without being able to look through the viewfinder. Instead of overlaying a texture in Photoshop, I scratch the negatives themselves before scanning. It's only after that final physical step that I can see what the results look like.
Once these negatives have been scanned it becomes a cycle of curating and editing. To date I've gone through almost ninety different derivations from thirty original images, and have sifted out three photos that please me. The series is still young, so I may find more in the photos that I already have, and I'll certainly be creating more raw material over the coming months. But the key component of creating the situation, guiding the process, and then letting success happen – or not – of its own accord will remain unchanged.
I can't say that I'm willing to completely remove control. My version of spontaneous photography is still well-planned and far from impulsive. The basis for my abstract photography remains consistent and repeatable even as the images themselves are the product of serendipity. What can I say? I'm a product photographer at heart.
Comments, questions, thoughts? You can find me on Twitter or via e-mail.
Digital cameras suit me perfectly. The "Lakefill" images that I photographed over the summer, and are nearing completion as a folio and prints now, were taken with some moderately high-end digital gear and is almost certainly the best of my personal work. It's clean, crisp, and detailed.
But over the past couple of years I've been building up a collection of film cameras. My relationship with film is very different from digital; while I'm one of those photographers who doesn't look to fundamentally change an image in post-prcessing, with film I'm willing to accept "character" and imperfections that I would never tolerate from a digital camera. Not that I don't seek perfection in the equipment that I use to begin with – my winter and spring trips to Coney Island were done with a Hasselblad and a Zeiss rangefinder and lenses – but seeing the negative as a physical thing gives a certain authority to their initial state that all-digital capture lacks.
The series that I've been working with most recently is taking that even farther. Instead of trying to exercise control over every part of the image, my approach has been to set up certain conditions and then guide the process. Taken with a film camera, these are long exposures that are zone focused and taken without being able to look through the viewfinder. Instead of overlaying a texture in Photoshop, I scratch the negatives themselves before scanning. It's only after that final physical step that I can see what the results look like.
Once these negatives have been scanned it becomes a cycle of curating and editing. To date I've gone through almost ninety different derivations from thirty original images, and have sifted out three photos that please me. The series is still young, so I may find more in the photos that I already have, and I'll certainly be creating more raw material over the coming months. But the key component of creating the situation, guiding the process, and then letting success happen – or not – of its own accord will remain unchanged.
I can't say that I'm willing to completely remove control. My version of spontaneous photography is still well-planned and far from impulsive. The basis for my abstract photography remains consistent and repeatable even as the images themselves are the product of serendipity. What can I say? I'm a product photographer at heart.
Comments, questions, thoughts? You can find me on Twitter or via e-mail.
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