Will Camera Phones Destroy Photography?

In any “photo op” moment any more, it is impossible to miss the invasion of the camera phone.  Where it used to be easy to tell when a camera was around and if people had them handy, now anyone with a phone could be a clandestine photographer.  Even at occasions that used to be ruled by the professional photographer such as weddings and the like, we now see those dozens of hands going up snapping photos with camera phones that seem to dominate the scene.

Conventional photography is a highly developed art form and profession.  The precision of the equipment and the ability of photographers to deliver a high quality product to their customers is well known and the result of decades of evolution of the craft.  But today it is possible for anyone to become an amateur photographer using that tiny cell phone in their pocket or purse. 

The question needs serious consideration for three audiences.  For the professional photographer, is this the end of your profession?  Will digital phones wipe out your customer base and make you obsolete?  For the aspiring photographer, what about your future?  Should you even invest in learning to use the sophisticated equipment that makes professional photography so superior?  Why bother if camera phones are going to make it all obsolete?  And for you the consumer, can you get the same quality of photographs with using camera phones as you can by hiring a photographer?

These are valid questions.  It is very common when a new technology begins to make inroads into a profession for the old guard of that profession to feel threatened.  It happened when television came along and the media called it the death of radio.  It happened when talkies and then color was introduced to movies and television and at each technological improvement in the music world.  And with each dire prediction of the demise of an industry, the opposite took place and that industry adjusted, evolved, got better and prospered all the more.

So there are good reasons not to worry that camera phones is going to destroy photography as we know it including…

*    Camera phones cannot achieve the same levels of quality.  There is a good reason that the professional photographer has invested in the highly sophisticated equipment that he has in his studio and that he or she takes to a shoot.  The many years and decades of research have surfaced the problems with quality that primitive equipment could not deal with.  Modern photography equipment has precise instrumentation to handle lighting issues to properly frame each photograph and to produce a professional quality outcome that people want from a wedding, a portrait or any kind of professional photography.  You can bet that forensic photography, fashion photography and photography for publication will ever be willing to accept the low standards of quality that are the outcome of camera phone pictures.

*    It’s an amateur game.  When you see kids holding up their camera phones at a concert to steal a picture, you know that device is not going to result in a professional quality shot.  This is especially true in a live setting like a concert where there are myriads of issues such as lighting, visual noise and other problems that have to be overcome with sophisticated instrumentation just not available on a camera phone.  Camera phones are an amateur photography device.  And they will always occupy that niche.

*    Standards of the final product would be compromised.  And high standards of quality are what make professional photography a value to it’s customers.

This is not to cast camera phones in a negative light.  They have their place and they are great fun.  But we in the professional photography world have nothing to fear from the growth of this technology.

Have You Seen The Latest Street Photography

One of the most candid styles of photography is street photography.  It consists of candid pictures taken of people in public situations.  Street photography was done everywhere on the street and now has moved to the mall, at clubs, streets, parks, and practically anywhere.  A street photographer never asks anyone to pose, and he or she does not want anyone to act as if he or she knows what might happen next. This takes away from the natural look needed when using the technique of street photography.

Street photography stems from another type of photograph that called documentary photography.  Documentary photography once said to be the most honest and true to life picture taking.  There are professional and amateur brands of documentary photography, as well as street photography.  Street photography reflects society in its untainted state. This accounts for many pictures we see on the internet and television that reflect what was happening at the time.

 Pictures of this genre use black and white film.  Street photography often shows irony in situations.  Many street photographers use wide view lens cameras to capture a wider area.  The shots usually have the appearance of a screen or a window viewing the human state at a particular moment.  The photographer becomes removed from the scene.  This type of picture taking captures the most honest moments in life.

Some photographers who specialize in street photography take their cameras to public events like conventions, meetings, and tragic sites.  Others simply photograph life around them.  A famous street photographer named Garry Winogrand was well known for capturing New York everyday for years.  He was interested in shedding light on the contemporary social issues of his time.  He became prominent after the 1960’s.  He shot about one hundred photographs a day for about thirty years, and left over three hundred thousand unedited exposures.

One interesting thing about street photography is that sometimes a photographer might capture things on film that they were not even focusing on.  Strange and funny things might be happening in the background or the foreground of a photograph that they do not even notice.  When the film is developed, they often find things within the scope of their shots that are ironic, interesting, or funny.  Many times, things are seemingly unrelated to the rest of the shot, but because of this factor, one can say that street photography is one way that we use to capture the moment.

The genre of street photography started between the end of the 19th century and the mid to late 1970s.  One of the assisting inventions of this type of picture taking was 35-millimeter film.  Thirty-five millimeter film was introduced towards the late 19th century.  Photographers from both Europe and North America spread the popularity of the genre and developed the art behind it.  Including in the early development were photographers Henri Cartier-Bresson of France and Robert Frank of Switzerland. 

You do not have to be a professional to take on street photography.  You do not necessarily have to use black and white film either.  All you need is a way to take pictures.  You can make your own documentary film series.  The pictures you take can comment on society.  Your photographs can record people doing mundane activities like eating or sleeping.  It is important to remember, however, that you should not publish pictures of people without their consent.

Becoming a street photographer can be a great hobby.  You can donate your pictures to museums and websites, or you can start your own website.  There are also photo archives that consist of collections of pictures that are available for public use.  This is also a place that you may have your pictures displayed. Street photography is one way to capture the real moments of life.  Thanks to technology, film editing is easier than ever.  Once you try street photography, you find yourself caught up in the real world. The pictures reflect the everyday life and times.

Candid Photography, Taking Pictures Of Your Friend Without Their Attention

Candid photography is by definition taking pictures of people when they are unaware.  Part of the fun in photography is catching your human subject’s off guard so that your pictures have more emotion.  Photographers who work for magazines, like Time Life, have been able to get candid shots of their subjects.  I think most of us can remember the black and white photographs of Africans and others giving rise to more emotion from the viewer.  Taking candid shots may appear easy although there are few techniques in the photography world that will make the candid shot worth more than just a snap shot of friends.

First and of course most important is to keep the subject in view while they are not paying attention.  The next step is training your eye to catch the moment.  You have to be able to move fast, but with design.  You need to have your camera set for the picture before you are even aware you will take the photograph.  The best way to do this if you have a digital or automatic camera is to keep it on the proper setting.  Manual cameras take moments to focus and can loose the candid shot if your subject becomes aware of you.

Candid photography relies on the light; however, you may not always get to choose the angle.  The angle could be where you are standing at the time.  As a photographer of candid photography, you know the importance of choosing the best angle at the right moment that is possible.

The entire point of candid photography is to gain the unguarded moments of a person’s emotions, whether it is tears, happiness, love, or other emotions.  While it is true, you need to have light, angle, and a good camera to catch the shot it is more important to observe.  Most photographers are trained observers.  Their eyes will wander over the crowds, landscape, or other setting searching for the perfect shot.  They will always have a camera ready.  It can be extremely hard when you are taking photographs of your friends because they tend to be more involved in the conversations or activity.

The key to taking candid photographs of your friends is to draw them away from the fact that you carry a camera.  If they forget you carry the tool, they are more likely going to act natural.  Some friends tend to pose in front of the camera while others will shy away turning their backs when you get ready to take a photograph.  Knowing your friends will help you find the best way to take candid shots without their knowledge. 

Observing, having the camera ready, and understanding the basics of photography will yield you better results when you try for a candid shot.  Posing or turning away from the camera will take away from the shot you hoped to attain so hanging to the side or a little ahead can get you the shot you may need.  Profiles make great candid shots because the person will not realize you are taking a photograph until you have already clicked the button.  Candid photography can be one of the most rewarding arts of photography, but also vexing when the subject is aware of the camera. Always remember the camera when going out with friends.

The Underwater World Captured With Photography

Underwater photography is growing every year, those who go diving wish to bring the diving world visible to those who do not dive.  We have always been fascinated with the oceans and bays of the world as an unknown world.  Bringing vacation pictures home to your friends or selling them as professionals has been a time honored tradition and now we can bring the underwater world home through the use of digital photography.

There are many types of underwater cameras.  You have the highly expensive professional cameras and the one time slightly effective versions.  Knowing which camera will work for you is very important.  Part of finding the right camera may lie with in the housing you wish to purchase.  Underwater photography requires you to protect your camera from the harmful affects of water so you will have to purchase housing with seals to eliminate the water.  The housing you find may fit the camera you have.  In fact, most companies will sell the housing for the cameras you have.  If you find you, need a better camera for the underwater world you will need to look at packages.  These packages will include the housing.

Let us look at the 35mm cameras.  Most of these cameras are just point and shoot.  If they were meant for underwater chances are they have at least a mild filter to correct for the lack of color underwater.  These cameras will not filter out the particles you find floating along in the water on a poor visible day.  Usually they are limited to less than 100 feet.  I would not use this type for anything below 80 feet.  You would not want to loose pictures because the housing failed under pressure.  While this is not common, it is a concern for most photographers.

The more professional cameras are larger with a huge lens to let light in as well as have filters to help bring clarity to any photograph.  Typically, these cameras require you to have a deep-set hobby in underwater photography, as the expense is high.  Digital cameras are the best way to take underwater photographs because you can make sure you have the desired affects before leaving the seen.  Of course, most underwater life will not hang around for a second shot, but coral reefs and the animals that inhabit them may remain. 

Most underwater cameras will also have a flash.  It is best to take an underwater photography course before delving to far in your hobby.  Sometimes the flash will help you with the photographs, but other times it will wash the subject out and ruin the print.  You can also use underwater cameras when you are snorkeling.  Some flashes are built in to the camera while others are external.  The external flashes can be a stick with a little light bulb on top.

When storing your underwater camera and flash you usually want to store them without the batteries as the batteries can die quickly.  This is mostly for the cameras that use double AA batteries.  Underwater photography is a great world to take home with you especially if you are on a dive vacation.  Underwater photography requires a few more skills than regular photography due to the lighting conditions, but once you understand them you will be bring home great pictures every time. 

Posing by Not Posing

Hard as it is to believe, portrait photography is considered to probably the hardest of the many specializations in the profession.  That moment of positioning a subject in front of that plastic fake background to sit on an uncomfortable chair and make a smile they would never use in any other setting is legionary and not one that you look forward to.  And you can tell the subjects, especially the men, are enjoying this about as much as they like going to the dentist.

So how to take some of the teeth out of the process.  For some portraits, you cannot get away from the formal “seating”.  But even then, there are ways to relax the subject so the smile you get was one they really wanted to give you.

The optimum portrait is one that is not a portrait.  If you can get the subject talking about their favorite subject, interacting with someone they like or love and using their sense of humor, that sparkle in their expression and gleam in their eye is absolute portrait gold to you the photographer. 

Now, you cannot lie to the subject.  So if you explain that you are going to be over here working on this stubborn camera, then just gently guide the conversation, they will begin to get used to hearing the shutter to off and seeing the flash but they may be able to not tense up. 

Some of the finest couple portraits I have captured happened when I got the couple having a loving chat or mild argument with some teasing and that natural flirtation came out.  When you can snap that moment in time, you will have a photograph they will treasure for a lifetime. 

Obviously, the key to any photograph is to capture the personality and the “soul” of your subject.  I was photographing a boy scout in his uniform for a very important photograph to the family because the boy had achieved the Eagle rank, which is a high honor.  But I knew this kid had lots of personality so I wanted the “formal” shot but I wanted this kid’s heart in it too.  So I told him I would be snapping a few shots to test my shutter and I got him talking about boy scouts and camping.  As I got him to tell me about the funniest moments he experienced camping, that smile came out and boom, I had my shot.  It hangs in my lobby now as one of my finest moments as a photographer.

If you can get the couple to do the portrait at home, in a restaurant or at some familiar setting, you can get that kind of rapport going much easier.  This requires that you, the photographer must be not only a skilled artisan with your camera but somewhat of a politician, a psychologist and a hypnotist all tied up in one.  So polish up some good “charm” that you will use to ease those personality shots out of your subjects.

And perfect that charm for different personalities.  You may need to flirt the smile out of a young girl or tease it out of a child.  You may need to get some “man to man” humor out of that burley construction worker or make an off the cuff crack about a politician to get Mr. Business Man to chuckle.  And for the babies, well, they will almost smile for their mommy and almost certainly smile for daddy so use them to the hilt.

By combining your skills as a photographer with a generous portion of people charm and grace, you will make memorable portraits that will be better than the uncomfortable, stiff looks that so many accept as ok.  Your customers will be happier and you will enjoy a pride in your work that you well deserve.

Photography Through the Ages

When you see videos of the early developers of photography, it’s pretty funny especially in light of photography today.  In those old movies, to get a picture, the camera was as big as a computer is today.  The photographer had to put his head under a sheet and hold up a huge tripod which exploded with smoke and fumes to make the flash. 

Today photography could not be more different.  In the movies, we used to be astonished when spies had cameras in their watches or the soles of their shoes.  But now it is common for almost everyone to have a camera in their phone and to be able to pull it out and snap a photo virtually anywhere.

Let’s fill in a few gaps.  We can go back to the origins of the language to find that the word “photography” began in the Greek times and it literally means “drawing with light.  But the actual science of photography did not really take off until the 1800’s in this country when a fellow by the name of John Hershel applied the words “photography”, “positives” and “negatives” to the task of producing pictures.  We had “negatives” of our photos from then until the dawn of digital photography in the last few years.

For most of us, though, the company Eastman Kodak is probably the one we associate most with the early developments of photography.  And it was the early pioneer of photography, George Eastman that made the first advancements on the primitive methods being used until his work in 1839.  A little trivia?  Eastman made the name “Kodak” up because he wanted his company name to begin with a “K”.

The developments began to come along pretty routinely as photography began to mature and become more sophisticated.  Color photography was developed in 1861 by a scientist named James Clark Maxwell.  Up until then all photographs were black and white or monochrome.  Color photography was a huge leap forward but it really did not start to move into the public arena until two brothers named Lumière in 1907 invented the color plate.

Over the decades to follow, photography moved forward steadily and moved out of the world of science and then journalism and into each of our homes.  But the revolution that has turned photography into what we know it to be today occurred in 1981 when Sony invented the first camera that worked without film.  The digital age was upon us.

It was Kodak that again got the lead on the marketplace by getting the first digital camera out on the market in 1990 when they developed the Kodak DCS 100.  As with all technology, early digital cameras were large (by today’s standards) and much more expensive than we are used to now.

Innovation in the field of photography has continued to march almost as fast as people could keep up.  When digital cameras were offered that gave us a port to be able to download them to our computers, the internet explosion of imagery was fueled. 

Further development coming virtually every year since 1990 included the rapid and phenomenal expansion of memory in digital cameras along with the concept of swappable storage drives.  This changed the way people took pictures because now the number of pictures someone could take was virtually limitless.  The expansion of memory also gave developers the ability to add video capture to the same devices as were used for photography so that virtually anyone could become a cameraman with that tiny camera that could by this time fit in their shirt pocket.  Much of the fun of internet sites like YouTube can be attributed to the ability of the average citizen to take video anywhere, anytime and at no cost to them. 

The photography and video industry has had to do a lot of adjusting to learn how to service this market that was changing at speeds unimaginable by George Eastman a century before.  The affordable availability of quality color printers that enabled people to print their photographs at home was a boon to the amateur camera buff but a blow to the photography industry.

But to their credit, the industry has kept up.  But we can be sure that the developments are just getting underway.  Who knows what new technical wizardry is ahead for the photography world.  It is sure to be a fun ride, no matter what the future holds.