Lessons I Didn’t Learn In Photo School 36 – 40
This Week’s LIDLIPS
36. Make photos even when you don’t have a camera.
37. Don’t undervalue the importance of your monitor.
38. Accuracy is measured by experience not by color space.
39. A camera and a thick dictionary have a lot in common.
40. Just because somebody already made that photograph, does not mean that you shouldn’t.
Lessons I Didn’t Learn In Photo School 36 – 40
36. Make photos even when you don’t have a camera
Photography has way more to do with seeing than it does with driving a piece of hardware. Practice your skills as a photographer even when you don’t have a camera. Make mental pictures anywhere at anytime. Study the light around you. Watch the gestures and expressions of people across the restaurant. Look for geometry in the surfaces and shadows around you. Pick a word. Say it to yourself every time you take a mental picture. “Snap”.
37. Don’t undervalue the importance of your monitor.
It used to be that I considered my lenses to be the most important photo gear in my arsenal. Lately I’ve come to understand that my most critical piece of gear is actually my computer monitor. If you take your craft as a digital photographer seriously, you’ll spend far more time looking at your monitor than you do looking through your favorite lens. Don’t get me wrong. I still buy (or rent or borrow) the best glass that I can. Yet, as the world sees it, my monitor has the greatest impact on the quality of my photography. Without a high-quality monitor (and the profile system to go measure its health), I have no way of controlling the character of the color in my images. And, just as an expensive lens is useless until you learn to shoot it, having a monitor and profiler is of no value until you commit to learning the fundamentals of color management.
38. Accuracy is measured by experience not by color space.
A colleague asked an interesting and reasonable question recently. “Was it fair for me to increase the saturation of colors in my photos so that there are now colors visible that did not exist in the original capture?” The teetering point between documentation and interpretation is always a space that stimulates such great thought. Fair? Absolutely. The latest digital cameras still only capture a fraction of what I can see. When there are colors in the scene that are beyond the range of a camera’s sensor, tonality is mechanically compressed. A technological limitation should not be the defining measure for the accuracy of the color in my photos. Rather it’s how my photographs portray my recollection of the experience that is the defining measure of accuracy.
39. A camera and a thick dictionary have a lot in common.
If one believes that reality can be captured, then neither a camera nor all the words in an unabridged dictionary are an efficient trap. It’s not the light-gathering machine or the vocabulary list that convey human experience. Rather it is the efforts of the photographer and of the writer that distill experience into the reality that is communicated. The question of whether the photographer and the writer convey their reality or create a new one remains.
40. Just because someone already made that photograph does not mean that you shouldn’t.
Often there is a great prejudice among emerging photographers (particularly young emerging photographers) against photographs that mimic or derive from the work of other (“famous”) photographers. Curious. I do not recall being reprimanded in grade school for not writing original masterworks. Rather, I often received gold stars for writing just like every other kid in the class. Likewise, if the scene calls to you, photographing a pepper in a bowl or that unique building at Fifth & Twenty-second should not be avoided. In a long life, there is truly very little for which an individual can take sole credit. We stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. Without knowing, we inspire others and draw inspiration simultaneously. Just as there is nothing wrong with preparing a meal pioneered by a famous chef, there is nothing wrong with venturing into the realm of other photographers. Explore their territory. Experience their vision. Eventually, you’ll realize that you’ve wandered off the established path onto one of your own.
Previous Lessons I Didn’t Learn In Photo School
LIDLIPS 32–35, LIDLIPS 28–31, LIDLIPS 22–27, LIDLIPS 18–21, LIDLIPS 13–17, LIDLIPS 1–12
re: #36
I do this all the time…without the verbal “snap”
Then I swear to myself because I usually don’t have enough time to stop and take the shot.
Another great list of learnings. #37 is something I’m really coming to appreciate and understand the importance of. And #40 is a good one as well. Sometimes it’s hard to NOT photograph something that’s already been shot – like the Golden Gate bridge. What I try to do is ‘get my camera in a new place’ and do MY take on it. Like I did recently with that unique building at 5th and 25th. I had only a 50mm lens and harsh sunlight, so I tried to make lemonade in post.
And hey, Syl, nice piece in today’s USA Today! I posted a link to the article over at my blog.
~Mark
[...] Source and Read More: pixsylated.com [...]
Mark – Great shot of the Flatiron! Thanks for sharing it. Syl
Great addition to the list. #39 and #40 hit it just right. I apprenticed to an artist to learn and then found my own way. Sometimes we learn a lot more by trying to do what someone else has done and in the process find a new way to see. I really look forward to these lessons please keep them coming.
‘Photography has way more to do with seeing than it does with driving a piece of hardware’
I love the above line. It infuriates me listening to photographers getting hung up for hours on end on hardware such as the camera model, when they overlook the subject matter, the concept, the theme, the purpose of capturing an image!
Thanks for the valuable thoughts and ideas! Am I correct when you say monitor “profiler system”, you mean monitor calibration? I wonder if you have any recommendations on which monitor calibration brand to use?
Hey Arpad! “Calibration” refers to changing the settings (typically contrast and brightness) to optimize the monitor for a particular viewing condition and to establish the basic parameters for profiling. Calibration measures a series of white to gery to black patches. “Profiling” measures a series of color patches so that the color being produced by the monitor can be measured. They are different, but related steps.
A good unit is the Xrite ColorMonkey. I use a higher end Xrite system that can also create printer profiles for both RGB and CMYK machines. If you want the best, look at the EyeOne system by Xrite. Cheers! S
Really enjoy these lists!
I’ve been thinking a lot about #40 this week. I’ll be heading to Zion in a few weeks for 5 days. Looking through guides, planning hikes, and wondering about what I’ll come away with. Anyone familiar with Zion knows it’s an amazing place and it’s also heavily photographed, especially certain spots. I’m betting that I can’t help but take the same scene here and there because those scenes are just too cool to ignore!
Actually, it happens often for me. Living in AZ near Sedona and the Grand Canyon I find I’m shooting “famous” places regularly. Just putting my own spin on those places!
[...] continues with his nice lessons series and has now made it up to the impressive count of 40. Maybe he’s planning to make a book from [...]
“In a long life, there is truly very little for which an individual can take sole credit.”
Absolutely!
[...] few days ago, Syl Arena, in his “Lessons I Didn’t Learn In Photo School” said Just because somebody already made that photograph, does not mean that you shouldn’t. [...]
First stop at your site here and thoroughly enjoyed the visit, particularly your LIDLPS. I do have a question. How did you get that rotating Flickr badge, not sure if that is what it is called, on your site. Is it something you created or can it be found somewhere?
Thanks for sharing and I’ve got this bookmarked so will be back.
The corollary to taking photos even when you don’t have a camera: take photos, even with a crappy camera.
I snap cell-phone (actually iPhone) photos all the time, even sometimes when I DO have my Nikon with me. It’s a different photo, for a different audience, with a different purpose.
An example is on my blog right now, a touristy snap of Wall St that I took at the same time as the client’s assigned photo right below it.
It just feeds a different part of the brain. The client’s shoot always veers off to the left brain (“exposure, pose, expression, page layout, cover?,” etc) while the quick snap with the cell phone is pure right-brain (oooh, pretty!) and keeps those creative muscles warmed up.
Thanks Syl, love the whole LIDLIPS series.
Syl, I am loving the LIDLIPS, it’s fantastic. Especially for a self taught amateur like me. Many of these I have come to discover on my own,especially #40. I am working my way through all of them right now. But John’s note above about the left and right brain reactions to photography, even if he stole ‘em from someone else are inspired.
I’ve only just discovered your site, but it will be placed very high in my favorites list for daily visits. I was attracted by the link in Scott Kelby’s blog to your comments on Canon Speedlight shooting. So along with thanks to you for your site and insights, I want to thank Scott for sending me here.
#36 – I do this all the time, especially in class. It’s so much more interesting to look at the way my eye can focus on different parts of my calculator, than to look at yet another equation.