The Full Frame

I came across Ken Rockwell’s site looking for reviews of a Zeiss 50mm 1.4 that I was contemplating buying and stumbled again upon his article explaining the “Seven Levels of Photographers,” a pretty clever satire that’s roughly a cross between the Buddhist cycles of reincarnation and Dante’s Inferno’s seven circles of hell. Rockwell encourages photographers to focus on creating pictures instead of focusing primarily on what type of equipment they have.

After reading the article, I had a bit of fun reminiscing of my progress through the “seven levels.”

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/7.htm

My past mentor, National Geographic photographer Don Doll S.J., used to tell me exactly the same thing in as many words.

Showing up with the 70-200mm 2.8 IS USM  or a 50mm 1.0L or a Leica won’t make you a better photographer if you don’t know what to do with them and if you aren’t creative.

Granted I, like many people, didn’t start out as a splendid photographer but I would like to think that I have always had passion. Whether (or not) you produce top quality images or whether you have top quality equipment, its the desire to learn and to progress that really shows up in your work.

That being said, let it be known that my first real camera was the Canon EOS 3 but generally I think that by starting out on such an advanced piece of machinery I was given both a blessing and a curse.

I was given a blessing because I had to technically bring myself up to that level of camera before I could produce ANY images that were usable. I have boxes of blurry & poorly exposed photos sitting in my closet right now to prove this point… The camera itself has 4 modes: P, Tv, Av, and M. Program, Shutter Priority, Aperture Priority, and Manual respectively. Aside from everything I learned from reading photo.net, every chance I got I would check out a book from the library, or go to Barnes & Nobles to spend hours reading all the books in their photography section. Needless to say, my family got a bit pestered that I was always taking pictures of them, always trying to learn something, always trying to get something right. Even a simple trip to Chili’s or the mall would turn into a photo excursion for me, where I would load my gadget bag with my EOS 3 a few rolls of film and the beastly 50mm f/1.8. Slowly and slowly I got better. Through MUCH trial and error I have learned to make full use of every mode the camera has to offer. Not to mention by my constant reading I had inherited decades worth of experience from old news & wedding photographers. Those are the people with real skill, those are the images where you only get one chance for it to come out perfectly, that and there is no “review image” button to make sure your subject is in focus or you got the image that you would like. So I pity the new generation of photographers… those that start out on DSLRs. Being able to instantly review and tweak the pictures has caused most people to never really learn exposure, or focus, or aperture, or shutter speed. Being able to photoshop has blurred the line between pro and amateur. I hear talk of people who will spend hours and days in photoshop after a shoot making their prints usable. Why? Just shoot it correctly the first time, with the correct exposure, the correct focus, and the correct framing and no photoshop is necessary. After a shoot of 500+ pictures I will spend maybe an hour selecting the best from each location, then I’m done. That’s what starting out on film and with an advanced camera has given me.

The curse that was given to me was the fact that since I had to learn all this, I never was able to fully express my creativity and my style. Its hard to have much of a style when your picture comes out underexposed because your subject is wearing light colors, or when you accidentally mis-focus. Granted I can now “fully express my creativity” as canon calls it, there were a lot of missed opportunities in the past.

Never miss an opportunity to learn, and never believe that you know it all.