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Veteran
I rarely carry more than a pocket or very simple camera on vacation for this exact reason.
photography's main pitfall
- Thread starter Margu
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I rarely carry more than a pocket or very simple camera on vacation for this exact reason.
michaelwj
----------------
This echos my path, but I often wonder which came first?
In my case, I had a definite shift in attitude, and as a result of that, my DSLR got replaced by an M6. It just "fits" better.
Michael
Rangefinderfreak
Well-known
During my "Professional days" as a commercial advertising Photographer, I was traveling to places where people loved to go...(Ibiza, Paris, Florida, whatever...) During the day, with assistant, editor, stylist, models, people hired to be in a picture just in a specific way, it was A RELIEF, after all that planning and shooting to pack the big cameras, strobes, reflectors etc... etc.. and grab the LEICA, slip a couple rolls TRI-X in pocket and just go on the street, enjoy the diminishing light, just FEEL how the Tri-X WOULD LIKE TO BE EXPOSED... This is and was always the best part of photography, no money from those B&W 35mm images, but those were the ones I cherished, saved, when all those slick commercial images were dumped almost right away when the invoice was paid... www.jukkavatanen.fi
Hosermage
Well-known
I think this quote is appropriate:
"The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera."
-- Dorothea Lange
Can't say that I know what she really mean, but to me, photography opened my eyes to see the beauty in the world around me. Sometimes, having a camera with me is just bonus.
"The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera."
-- Dorothea Lange
Can't say that I know what she really mean, but to me, photography opened my eyes to see the beauty in the world around me. Sometimes, having a camera with me is just bonus.
JChrome
Street Worker
jsrockit
Moderator
I feel that by actually seeing through photography we notice what others do not. I'm not sure why being aware of your surroundings and enjoying what is around you is somehow not enjoying life.
daveleo
what?
I went through that phase for a while.
It will pass, your spirit about it will change.
Don't worry too too much.
Margu
Established
if it wasn't for photography i wouldn't be searching for beauty in the nature and actively looking for visually pleasing situations so in one respect photography has made me appreciate the world even more.
i guess its not really a pitfall after all, but at the same time i'm aware that without a camera i won't just go for walk in the nature or on the city streets, i could if i have to but it won't be as much fun as it is when photographing.
i guess its not really a pitfall after all, but at the same time i'm aware that without a camera i won't just go for walk in the nature or on the city streets, i could if i have to but it won't be as much fun as it is when photographing.
jsrockit
Moderator
And there is nothing wrong with not enjoying a walk without your camera as much as one with. You are into photography... it makes sense to bring your camera. Stop feeling guilty. 🙂
Margu
Established
thanks to this thread my thoughts are cleared up. there is no reason to feel guilty if one is enjoying the nature/life with the act of photographing.
gilpen123
Gil
Yeah use your feet as a leading line to the subject....:angel:
noisycheese
Normal(ish) Human
Thus spake Pythagoras -
"Learn to see. Let your quiet mind observe and absorb," perhaps?
See before you photograph - don't just look. there is a difference.
I think that sentiment could also apply to photography.
"Learn to see. Let your quiet mind observe and absorb," perhaps?
See before you photograph - don't just look. there is a difference.
rivercityrocker
Well-known
To the OP: That happened to me for awhile. It was right around the time I decided I was going to stop being an amateur and go back to school to learn to shoot digital and do photography full-time (Digital was just evolving and I knew it was going to change things. We still shot mostly film and processed wet in the dark, but they were teaching Photoshop and scanning as well).
Anyway, I got kind of obsessed for awhile. Everything I looked at I would take it apart and analyze the color and form, think about what aperture I'd like to use, composition techniques. I was a mad man. I had to have a camera with me, I had to have all focal lengths covered. If I didn't I'd find something I couldn't shoot and I'd dwell upon it for days.
At some point I realized I wasn't even seeing what was in front of me. I couldn't see the forest for the trees. Everything was shutter speed/aperture/line/form/texture... I'd get back to the hotel or home and realize that I capture these terrific images, but I couldn't remember actually SEEING the world. I was only seeing parts of it. I started leaving my DSLR at home. I'd get a little nervous about missing shots, but I also stopped to look more, to breathe in and smell (well not all the time), to remember the way the breeze felt, all of those things that I missed out on by obsession.
Then the obsession was gone. I started carrying around a camera again, but usually a smaller DSLR with a small prime. Not my pro rig. I started snapping more instead of over-analyzing. Now when I'm out and about I generally bring a Leica and one lens. Sometimes a small DSLR like my D5300 and a small kit zoom. Hell, I leave it in P mode when I riding my motorcycle and snap off shots at stop lights. I don't even care about the settings.
I don't really know what made me change, but it happened. Sometimes you have to force yourself to see outside of the viewfinder and only then can you realize what you should be putting into the viewfinder.
That probably makes no damn sense, but that's my experience.
Anyway, I got kind of obsessed for awhile. Everything I looked at I would take it apart and analyze the color and form, think about what aperture I'd like to use, composition techniques. I was a mad man. I had to have a camera with me, I had to have all focal lengths covered. If I didn't I'd find something I couldn't shoot and I'd dwell upon it for days.
At some point I realized I wasn't even seeing what was in front of me. I couldn't see the forest for the trees. Everything was shutter speed/aperture/line/form/texture... I'd get back to the hotel or home and realize that I capture these terrific images, but I couldn't remember actually SEEING the world. I was only seeing parts of it. I started leaving my DSLR at home. I'd get a little nervous about missing shots, but I also stopped to look more, to breathe in and smell (well not all the time), to remember the way the breeze felt, all of those things that I missed out on by obsession.
Then the obsession was gone. I started carrying around a camera again, but usually a smaller DSLR with a small prime. Not my pro rig. I started snapping more instead of over-analyzing. Now when I'm out and about I generally bring a Leica and one lens. Sometimes a small DSLR like my D5300 and a small kit zoom. Hell, I leave it in P mode when I riding my motorcycle and snap off shots at stop lights. I don't even care about the settings.
I don't really know what made me change, but it happened. Sometimes you have to force yourself to see outside of the viewfinder and only then can you realize what you should be putting into the viewfinder.
That probably makes no damn sense, but that's my experience.
Roger Hicks
Veteran
Most people who are serious about photography must surely have experienced something similar at some point. In fact, it's almost a definition of being serious about photography.
BUT... For me, release from this syndrome came with the simple realization that I can't photograph everything. Now, I find it perfectly easy to say, "Beautiful to look at. lovely to be here, but there's no photograph in it" (or at least, not one I can take). I've just come back from Spain with a loaner M Typ 240. I got some nice pictures. I got some failures. And there were quite a lot of things I didn't photograph, but just enjoyed.
Remember, too, the famous George Bernard Shaw quote, “A photographer is like a cod, which produces a million eggs in order that one may reach maturity.”
Cheers,
R.
Margu
Established
A lot of insightful posts which is great to read, especially personal examples.
someone said earlier that this could be addiction, i have to disagree with that. addiction is irrational dependence to something for pleasure at all costs. photography is not really a pleasure (for me), its more like work, even when its not for work. the physical effort itself is no pleasure at all, let alone the editing and processing. perhaps the only pleasure is getting that one shot that makes one feel that all the effort was worth it and since those shots are so rare, one simply has to shoot and shoot.
someone said earlier that this could be addiction, i have to disagree with that. addiction is irrational dependence to something for pleasure at all costs. photography is not really a pleasure (for me), its more like work, even when its not for work. the physical effort itself is no pleasure at all, let alone the editing and processing. perhaps the only pleasure is getting that one shot that makes one feel that all the effort was worth it and since those shots are so rare, one simply has to shoot and shoot.
Roger Hicks
Veteran
Michael Da Re
Well-known
Very well stated Ko.Fe. Before photography I missed a lot, but now I see the fine details of life around me. I see with more intensity, I listen more closely to what people are saying, I've come to better understand the rest of the world (even if it's just a little bit) through others photos. I carry a camera with me always and I don't see it as an addiction. It's more of an improvement of who I'm supposed to be.
aizan
Veteran
that's what i call an excessive work ethic.
semi-ambivalent
Little to say
As long as you are experiencing the world through your camera that experience is mediated. You must 'step out' a bit and look back in via the camera. You should go out without the camera and look without it. The images you see will be seen by you alone and not also by others via a photograph. This is not greed. At best it might be selfish, but it is much better to see selfishly than not to see at all, like the majority of people as they wander through their world.* At other times bring your camera so that others might see what you saw and enjoy it in the future. You will then be one of them only luckier, because you also saw it in the now, even though it was mediated by the camera.
Everybody gets their own world; never apologize for wanting as much of yours as Life allows. (While addiction is wanting a great deal of a small part to the exclusion of everything else, wanting to experience it all in balance is a life well lived.)
*I believe the philosopher Spinoza has something to say about "the sleepwalkers". But it might be another whose name escapes me now.
hepcat
Former PH, USN
This is the difference between being absorbed by the process, and having mastered the tool(s) to make images. We all have to learn the tool(s,) be comfortable with them, make them work for us. That is a process in and of itself. At some point, though, you master the tool. Once you master the process and your chosen tools, it's then that there are other discoveries to make.
Then you have to decide if you are a photographer who learned the tool(s) to make images, or you're something else... perhaps a collector, a darkroom technician/photo retoucher, or what ever else it is you enjoy about the process.
One of the sad commentaries on the pace of digital equipment development is that some folks are so absorbed with the latest and greatest that they never master the process. And the latest and greatest equipment really has little to do with becoming a photographer.
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