Has Camera Buying become like Hifi Buying?

We've been inundated and overwhelmed with loud and incessant chatter from self appointed champions of of camera buying from YouTube. And if you don't stop and think for yourself, you become hypnotized sheep, hanging on to these very opinionated people, emulating them and then becoming opinionated yourself and spreading toxicity.

In truth, these Youtubers are there to make an income from Youtubing - they dont need to work as photographers, their income is sufficient from YouTube and that depends on subscribers, hits, likes and being seen as influencers.

They try to appear and serve objectivity and comprehensiveness and all round knowledge. They need to appear to be the champions of vloggers, instagrammers, event photographers, sports, nature and landscape photographers, movie makers.

They want to be invited to press events because they gain reputation and credentials (if not swag, free flights and accommodation). And they get to test the gear for a few hours, or borrow for a couplenof weeks.

They have to appear familiar with different brand lenses, the quirks of different menus, buttons, dials.

When they can't figure out what opinion they should have, they open the floor to commenters on their videos and then it just becomes a loop of chatter. Self re- affirming and good for more hits.

Hifi gear used to be all about features and price and exclusive manufacture. Once you bought the gear, you could enjoy it. And then get dissatisfied because you really can't increase your enjoyment unless you upgrade.

Camera gear isn't an end in itself. Its a tool, a means to get your shot. The best camera won't get the most creative shot. You make up the rest of the contribution. Your personality, your heart, your talent, your skill.

The easiest way to fail in photography is to say to yourself "my camera gear can't do this" regardless of the quality of your gear.

Please Consider

Colour or Black and White?

Robin Wong was asking whether we present in black and white or colour. I had been pondering similarly as part a recent blog article - there I was looking at an old end of the line railway station, in some disrepair and it suited a vintage monochrome treatment because the weathered and worn pink roof tiles, patches of green, took away from the shape and the vintaginess of the presentation. Here's another one I like in monochrome.

Bicycle at Pulau Ketam

In the above scene, there is some light from the sky and the narrow street accentuates the chiaroscuro. There are flashes of bright red and other colours in the scene and these detract from the play of light, in my opinion.

I reckon part of this empathy to monochrome is having shot film, fondled the silver gelatin paper and gazed at the lustrous blacks that are quite different from modern inkjet black or screen rgb(0,0,0). There are heaps of new gen photographers who do black and white treatments digitally though, whether they went to Fine Art school or pressed my D-76 under their fingernails I don't know.

Black and White print can also be extremed - instead of a Tri-X or Agfapan patina, you can just move sliders in Lightroom to your heart's content, crushing detail.

There are times when colour definitely works.

Black Cat not in a Coalmine

Apple Girl

And then there is that purgatory where it is neither colourful nor truly monochromatic

Three 200 hp SuzukiMarines

Revisiting The Then

There's an old saying "That was then but this is now..." or something to that effect. In the 1960s to 80s, the amateur photographer was simply that. There was no internet. Glossy magazines cost money and if you lived outside of the UK (Amateur Photographer) or US, disconnected from your environs and your life. Yes, there might be the odd Photographic Society and exhibition, a few people striving for ARPS or FRPS but the average amateur simply slung his rangefinder or SLR and just went taking photos of content that was interesting to himself . Photo Fine Art schools were for the privileged, not the broad masses and not in the country you lived in.

The camera you used was moderately priced. There would be a few grasping their Leica or Nikon but the average enthusiast would be using one of the middle class, Japanese makes - remember Petri, Miranda, Asahi Pentax, Minolta (before it fell into Konica), Cosina and so on. Some people used 120 size film not because they were artists, but because that type of camera wasn't out of the ordinary and they liked looking down at their belly button. Most were 35mm users - we didn't even call them full frame though there were cropped film sizes like 127 and 110.

Lenses might be original brand (in which case they would be the ubiquitous 50mm (plus/minus) or you could splurge on an additional heady 28mm f/2.8 at the wide or 135mm f/2.8 at the telephoto. You might walk around with the one lens because you didn't think of buying another. And if you bought extra lenses, they might not be tack sharp Carl Zeiss, they would be some Komuranon or similar. We didn't talk about bokeh because most things were blurred. We were just happy that anything turned out sharp and used f/8. We couldn't chimp. We certainly didn't mercilessly pixel peep at 1:1

What about technique? We knew about leading lines and.... that was about it. I don't remember that we used visual puns of juxtaposition. Things were pretty straightforward. Yes, I'll say it. It was all simpler then.

Now, whilst the rest of the world chases astrophotography, high dynamic range blending, high speed sync with TTL flash, super intelligent continuous autofocus tracking and high-speed burst rates on sports, there's nothing to stop you from slowing down, turning back the clock. It's all up to you.

Pengurus Stesen

Fisherman reeling in the Prosperity (Huat Huat)

Look up - can you see the sky from here?

Each place has unique nuances and scenes that regular inhabitants become blind too. The detail is so mundane and you see it repeatedly in your daily life, 365 days a year that it is no longer something you notice. I find when I leave a place and come back after some time away, I notice things.

Detail of old facade on Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman, Kuala Lumpur

So, I'm here, looking up, waving my camera around like a tourist.  Here's what I enjoyed and became a nugget of memory in my mind. It isn't created to be a poster photo to sell cameras for a brand. It isn't created to be Fine Art Photo for the discerning connoisseur of taste (at least I don't think so). It's too real to be desired as a stock photo. It's not in the category of varied travel photos that some young dude Youtuber will place on Instagram to gain sponsorship. It's not an avant garde, modern trend street photo with strong graphic elements. But it's my photo.

It presents my glimpse of old KL. Before the modern, super polished glass and cladded skyscrapers became so dominant. It's the facade of a pre-independence shop house, the roof long gone, without new paint. The weeds and tropical ferns have resumed their inexhaustible march to recover the scenes from man made brick and concrete. Some backlit leaves on a background of sky.

Stopped a moment. Breathe in the past and the present.

Waving your camera around like a tourist

Sometimes, you've got to unlax. Feel the environs. Get in the mood. Wave your camera around like a tourist.

What do you get for that?

• A refresh of your feelings about an activity or a scene. Not the photography aspects. But your personal perspective.
• Practice in handling your gear in a casual manner and the boundaries between casualness and image quality in the field.
• The liberty and freedom of NOT taking a technically perfect shot.
• Finding out whether the people you hang out with (the community on your social network) will travel with you on your journey or despise you because you take less than perfect shots.

Thoughts and Musings 1: Jesse Marlow’s approach

Thanks to +michaels Camera, Video & Digital  who ran their Melbourne Photo Show event, we got to see and hear Jesse Marlow speak on his work. He is/was a photographer on the staff of Melbourne newspaper and has focussed on Street Photography for his own body of work.. His talk was entertaining and he shared some aspects of his approach.

1. He does touch up his photos but isn’t into heavy “working” of his images in computer editing

Coming from a newspaper legacy, he does not remove objects from the scene and stuff like that . If you look at his images, they are “just right”, tonally and exposure wise and do not appear to be heavily tweaked. One very young audience member asked why his images  appeared nice and bright, how/did he use Adobe Lightroom to carry this out.

Ears in the audience must have pricked up. I think there are several approaches:

• Eschew any post processing and believe in the Holy Grail truth that “it is be straight out of the camera, untouched” or
• Accept what was there or coax the subject and light to a good position primarily. Do a slight touch up of exposure, tones, to taste. or
• Apply a signature filter / preset / recipe that colour grades and tones the result image so that it is inescapably, obviously you, or
• Apply every technique known to mankind, even multiple blended exposures, sharpening and noise reduction recipes, HDR, focus stacking, time lapse, compositing to effect what the creator visualises of the image.

It is often the case that a practitioner of one approach is becomes so obsessed in one approach that the other approaches are somehow inferior, often times, disparagingly so.

My opinion? Each approach is more appropriate to a particular genre – Street Photography shots, from the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson and the Magnum cohort, are not heavily tweaked after the shot. The emphasis is on the moment and the capture – the situation, the composition, the juxtaposition of elements. If you enhance the look too much, you lose that sense of impromptu and immediacy and you leave the genre. How much is too much? Ah, that’s the big question.

2. Jesse doesn’t “go out” to take photos.

He carries his camera with him as part of this urban, city activities and his shots are made from observation, spotting and then patiently waiting for that moment where the subject and drama come together to make the scene.  Again, from his newspaper work and background, I would suppose “going out” is his day to day income activities on behalf of the employer. So for his own body of work, it’s a different activity.

My opinion? It’s been popular to go out alone or with a group of friends on photo walks and encounters – because many of us don’t get out much, so it’s fun to walk with a camera and encounter sights. But don’t let daily happens go by, without a photo device near at hand. It doesn’t have to be a serious camera, it could be a phone camera. (More on that, another day)

Points to reflect on.