Why Professional Photography Today?
I remember the first picture that I took. I was maybe four and on vacation with my grandparents. When they both sat on a bench, they let me use their camera to take a picture of them. It was one of those “brick” cameras, the small ones that look like a sideways pocketbook. It might very well been a Kodak Pocket Instamatic 60, but I am not sure. I knew I had to keep them in the viewer when I pressed the shutter, and I was sure I had succeeded. Proudly I handed the camera back to my grandfather. A few weeks later when the pictures were developed, it turned out that I had failed miserably. I had taken a picture way too high and to the side. I only had captured the top my grandmother’s hat. My grandparents kept that picture. It was very special to them, and they told everybody the numerous story of their grandson’s first picture. I don’t know where this picture is today. Probably in some album, but it has weight. It has weight from the memory attached to it, from the story it came from, and from the fact that it is the only witness of my first try to be a photographer.
Some people might wonder why photographers exist today. In the age of 50 megapixel smartphones, isn’t everybody a photographer? Why would you even consider spending money on a portrait, taken by another person when you can just as well take a selfie? What can a trained photographer provide, what the technology in everybody’s pocket can’t?
I grew up in a day and age, where photography was still special. A family might own a camera, maybe even two. The camera was taken out on special occasions, for family events, and was taken on vacation for the obligatory “look where we have been” slideshows. Even though cameras were not unusual, they still had the air of exclusivity about them:
Film was expensive and not to be wasted. First there was the choice, which film to use - ISO 100, ISO 400, or even higher? Planning was involved in taking a picture. Once the ISO 400 film was in the camera, it had to be used; so better find a lot of situations with low light.
Film was limiting. While my SD card today can hold 5000 pictures, a film roll typically had 36. The choice to take the shot or save the picture for another opportunity was crucial. Only professional photographers had the money to use a film with the impressive click-click-click of a motor.
Developing film was expensive, and, if done at home, required a lab. I had the privilege of learning to develop film in high school. I still remember the adventure of unspooling and respooling the film in complete darkness, praying that not a single gleam of light would hit the roll until it was in the developing can. If done in a store, you were at the mercy of a store clerk, with no control over the results. Sure, you could reject the failures, but if it was the only picture of aunt Mitzie at mom’s birthday party, would you care if it was a bit blurry?
Composites were a process reserved for the few and proud. Cutting out precise paper masks and exposing a picture piece by pice to blend effects together, required a steady hand and was a skill, nay, an art.
Compare my youthful experience of a world, where cameras were common, but still special, with today’s practice. No, I am not lamenting the good old days and the decline of an art. But things have changed. Taking a picture is absolutely nothing special anymore. Phone cameras are tools for everybody. Be it to document your breakfast, or take a snapshot of the guy’s license plate because he bruised your car.
Every day we produce millions (billions?) of pictures and send them into the networks. And those pictures are, generally speaking, of excellent quality; sharp, colorful, with blurred backgrounds and, if desired, photo effects applied. Cell phone cameras have long eclipsed the point-and-shoot cameras of old. Developing a picture is now a thing of the past.
Photography has not declined, it is progressing. What has fallen by the wayside a bit, is the weight of the pictures.
I keep thinking back to that first failure of mine. If that had taken place on an iPhone, would my grandparents not have had me taken that picture again? Correct my mistake? The result might have been a better picture, one of many, and it would have gotten lost in the flood of other pictures, my grandparents might have taken on their iPhones that day, that week, that month.
What emotional weight do you assign to those 500 pictures on your phone, when you look at them, “scroll” though them (a term that had to be invented for the new technology)?
And still, there are those pictures that make us stop, cause our scrolling finger to arrest in midair, and be it just for a moment. That pause is the moment where we encounter something that stands out from the sea of images, be it the color, the pose, the contrast, or just the beauty of the picture. I want to create something that will make you lift you finger from the screen, and ponder on the image. Just for a moment I want you to lift your head out of the flood and see something that makes you marvel and admire what you see.
That brief moment is why I am taking pictures. You are my audience. Follow me on my journey.
