Category Archives: Commentary

Commentary, Ideas, Photographic Myths and Platitudes

Photographic Myths and Platitudes – Primes Make You a Better Photographer

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(This is another in my series of occasional posts based on my replies to questions about photography that come up from time to time. This question was under discussion in an online photography forum, where the discussion began with a new photographer asking whether the acquisition of certain equipment would make him a better photographer. Those with experience in photography know the answer to this question, but it comes up, explicitly or implicitly, all the time, so I think it is worth another look here. The following text is a slightly edited and expanded version of my original answer. This is also part of my “Photographic Myths and Platitudes” series of posts. )

For the moment I’ll leave the full-frame question aside * – not that there isn’t a lot to say about it in the context of your desire to become a better photographer – and just respond to the following:

“My goal here is to become a better photographer. I feel zooms make me lazy, and that primes would make me think more about my photography.”

Sorry to say, but that is nonsense, plain and simple.

This notion that somehow primes are more “serious” than zooms comes up from time to time, and certain folks who post about photography (though not so often people who actually do a ton of photography) encourage this odd and unfounded line of thinking. I’ve speculated about where it comes from at times, and some of the following come to mind:

  • There is a certain mindset among some folks who desire to be viewed as artists that holds that being “different” is the most important characteristic of artists. (It isn’t, by the way.) And by doing something different, like using only primes, they may feel that they have established their different-ness from a world in which most others use zooms most often.
  • There is another notion that modern is not as good as “classic,” and therefore sticking to older equipment types is better. While there can be a risk of being too infatuated with new stuff just because it is new (perhaps the opposite form of gear obsession from the extreme of automatically dismissing the new) it just doesn’t make sense to automatically assume that, for example, because Henri Cartier-Bresson shot with primes that  you should, too. (HCB, by the way, did not choose the gear he used because it was “classic” – he chose the newly developed and quite modern small 35mm film cameras for a variety of reasons relating to his specific needs.)
  • There is also an odd notion that assigns an almost moral imperative to doing things the hard way, and that then presumes that those who do things in a more efficient or practical way must not be as serious as artists. Therefore, if shooting with zooms is “too easy,” shooting with primes must be better. This is often paired with the derisive advice to “zoom with your feet” or a claim that “zooms will make [you] lazy.” (Artists typically have no interest in making their work harder; they are generally far more concerned with making it better, and will use any tools or methods that accomplish the latter goal.)
  • Finally, there is the unfortunate notion, not unique to photography, that being “better” is largely the result of having the best or the “right” equipment – e.g., if I use this sort of camera or this sort of lens I will be more of an artist than if I use that camera/lens. The seed of truth in this – photography does require equipment – is too often built up into a false notion that photography is largely or even primarily about what gear you use.

The “zooms will make you lazy” business completely baffles me. Yes, folks doing point and shoot photography often may use a zoom that way, just zooming to get the shoot of their kids or the waterfall that most fills the frame, without bothering to move from their current position. But that fact that casual amateurs can use a zoom lens on their point and shoot cameras that way does not mean that the use of a zoom always means that this is the way one shoots. Continue reading Photographic Myths and Platitudes – Primes Make You a Better Photographer →

Commentary, Ideas

Photographing Icons – Or Not

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Yesterday I shared elsewhere a photograph that someone had posted featuring a line-up of scores of photographers, arrayed tripod-to-tripod, ready to photograph one of those iconic views that we all know so well. I suspect that we have all been to such places and either found the experience of seeing and photographing them to be powerful… or we might have been repulsed by the crowds of people all apparently trying to “capture” the same thing, among them perhaps a number of folks who might be trying to almost literally recreate versions of the scene that they had seen elsewhere.

The point of the share (seen here and here) was not complimentary. My reaction to the photograph was to wonder, even more than usual, why people would want to make photographs that way. I phrased it as, more or less, “yet another reason to avoid photographing icons.”

However, a person wrote to me after I posted and pointed out, with a bit of anger and with some justification I think, that complaining about and putting down those who want to photograph a beautiful place might seem a bit pretentious and self-righteous.

She has a point.

While there is something a bit troubling about seeing dozens of people lined up to make the very same photograph, some of us might be a bit too quick to jump to overly negative conclusions. Perhaps there is a way to cast this as a positive lesson, rather than ridicule. So let me engage in a bit of reflection and honesty. Continue reading Photographing Icons – Or Not →

Commentary, Ideas

A Photograph Exposed: Photography and Luck

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(“A Photograph Exposed” is a series exploring some of my photographs in greater detail.)

I have never been shy about admitting the role that luck plays in producing effective photographs, especially photographs of the natural world. Vision and knowledge and experience and planning and all the rest are important, but we kid ourselves if we imagine that we are in control of our subjects to any great degree. The topic came up in a recent discussion, so I thought I’d share an edited version of my response here.

I can tell you with certainty that luck plays at least some role in many, if not the majority, of my landscape photographs. It is not the only thing, and preparation of all sorts is critical, but in the end almost every photograph depends on conditions and circumstances that are largely beyond my control. I’ve written quite often at my blog about the sudden unanticipated appearance of magical light or atmosphere, snap decisions to be here instead of there, showing up in a place to find the key element that I could not have predicted, and random decisions that led (or not!) to special photographs.

The following photograph is one of my favorite illustrations, though I could use scores of others to make the same point.

Fisherman, Winter Surf - Big Sur fisherman casts into the roiling winter Pacific Ocean surf.
Fisherman, Winter Surf

(To make the story even wilder, I ended up with three images of this scene, and I still have a hard time selecting a favorite.)

So, how did this photograph come about? It sure looks like it must have taken some planning to get that individual fisherman posed in front of the stupendous winter surf, right? Or else some serious Photoshop trickery ? No, on both counts.

One morning I decided to photograph at Point Lobos along the Central California coast – a bit less than an hour and a half from where I live. Why Point Lobos on that day? It is hard to say for sure since even though I knew that high surf was possible, I could have gone to many other coastal locations to find it. It is a place I photograph often, but so are at least a score of other locations within the same radius of my home. So, for no clear reason that I can articulate, other than it is one of the places I like to shoot, I headed that direction.

I got there  too early, and the park was still closed. I pulled up to the entrance, joining the short line of cars waiting for the gate to open, and figured I’d wait. As I sat there, I realized that I might as well drive around and see what else I could find while waiting. So I started the car, made a u-turn, and returned to highway 1, the Pacific Coast Highway. Should I go left (north) or right (south)? No idea. Oh, what the heck, I guess I’ll go south. (Less traffic to worry about when turning right onto the highway…)

Continue reading A Photograph Exposed: Photography and Luck →
Commentary, Ideas

Put Down That Camera!

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An article that I saw this evening at the SFGate website (“Arm’s length: Does filming hold reality at bay?“) got me thinking again about the strange ways that the ubiquitous camera has affected our relationship to the world around us. From the article:

We can film anything today, from anywhere, by simply extending our arm and aiming a device at the subject of interest. Then, almost as quickly, we can beam those images to the world. But is this progress? Are we starting to experience things through miniature screens rather than actually living them by being there? We are taking pictures, but we are distancing ourselves even further from the things we are taking pictures of?

The article opens by describing a group of people waiting for the passage of the peloton in the Olympic bicycle road race who, as soon as the cyclists appeared, raised cameras and rather than experiencing the actual event of the race, looked at in on the LCD panels of the cameras held in front of them, hoping, I presume, to get around to actually seeing race later on their computer screens.

I saw a similar scene unfold – actually I saw a lot of them unfold – recently on a summer afternoon in San Francisco. I had wandered over to the Palace of Fine Arts to, yes, make some photographs of the architecture, the surrounding grounds, and perhaps the people who were there on this sunny day. The Palace is an imposing, classical edifice left over from a worlds fair many decades ago, and it features giant fluted columns and a central structure with a very large and very tall dome. I could write an entire post about the sorts of things that people were doing there related to photography, but I’ll just mention one. When I photograph such a place I actually spend a lot more time just walking around and looking than I do making photographs. I might walk and look for ten or fifteen minutes, spot something, make a few photographs, and then go back to looking. As I walked along the pathway around the lake that sits in front of the Palace, I noticed people feeding the geese and other birds that congregate there. A large group of “kids” (perhaps high school age?) who appeared to be on a group visit from another country came by just as a small group of geese swam past. They rushed to the edge of the water to, I thought, get a closer look, sit on the low wall next to the water, and watch the birds. I was wrong. Every single one of them pulled out his/her cell phone or point and shoot camera and pointed it at the birds and made what could only have been the world’s most banal photographs of birds in water. I don’t recall a single one of them watching and experiencing the actual birds rather than recording the event for, well, for what exactly? “We went to San Francisco. There were some birds in the water.”

I often see a related form of photographic dysfunction when I’m making nature or landscape photographs. I might have found a beautiful spot, looked at it and studied in long enough to find a composition, and set up my camera to wait for the light or clouds or for the wind to stop. Or I might not yet have found a shot, instead just looking and walking around the scene, taking in its visual nature, thinking about color and light and wind and texture and form, waiting to see a photograph. If I am anywhere near a road, almost invariably one or more cars will pull up, windows will be rolled down, cameras poked through windows, windows rolled up, and away goes the car. Sometimes they don’t even slow down to make the photograph, driving by at the speed limit with cameras pointed out the window!

I cannot deny that there is some value in using a camera to simply record proof that you were there, and I’ll admit that I enjoy seeing old family photographs of people in these places. But the reflexive action of photographing everything at the cost of experiencing nothing seems sad and a bit perverse to me. If this thing being photographed is so special that it is worth traveling great distances to see it, isn’t it also worth slowing down long enough to experience it and take it in through all of your senses?  Isn’t it better to experience five things deeply than to skim the forgettable surface of 100 things without pausing?

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.