Wired on photography

Using your built-in flash at a ball game or concert is annoying...people often ask me about using their flash and why things far away appear dark but items within ten feet look decent...I'm very nice in explaining to them the limitations of their flash, they seem to get it...
2500 shots of your dog doing what you think is cute stuff is boring after the first five shots...
 
nikon_sam said:
I'm very nice in explaining to them the limitations of their flash, they seem to get it...
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You have chances to educate hundreds and thousands those who fire flashes as seen in opening ceremony of Olympic games :) I think in upcoming cameras there will be dedicated modes like "stadium" or "concert" with flash supressed. Sure, manufacturers will be forced to put into manual poetry like "this mode helps you to get out best from lens and advanced image processor" to somehow draw attention to this modes.
 
My dislike for HDR shots are perhaps the #1 reason why this is the only photography forum I participate in.

I'm guilty of the wide angle vertical, though.
 
How is w/angle vertical "wrong"? I haven't seen a lot, only photographer coming to mind it Bruce Gilden who(m) I love. I don't get it. And HDR, isn't Wired the primary website pushing that stuff?

martin
 
My biggest peeve is the use over-use of wide-angle lenses, particularly in journalism. I know about press-pools and "Getting the shot", but I imagine even Dali cringing at the stuff that gets past editors these days.
 
Very funny cos its true. Of course I would throw a few photographers down the hole too if I had the chance especially those who frequent some forums (not this one mercifully) who pop up at every post to lecture everyone else on why they are right and everyone else is wrong about choice of camera, choice of lens, why they must shoot RAW not JPG, software to process the shot, correct processing technique, why Photoshop simply MUST be used from first principles without plugins (even though it takes 3 years to learn) , the best way to print the shot, the best web site to present them. Not to mention why some lenses are diffraction limited at f16 and every other technical issue you can point a long bendy stick at.

GET OVER IT!

Or down the hole you go.

GOD sometimes I wish I was Hannibal Lecter! :^)
 
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I should post on one other related issue. To do with the lack of photo education of the great unwashed.

My wife (darling that she is, bless her little cotton socks) knows nothing about photography and sucks at using a camera. But this does not stop her from lecturing me about photo making. She does it regularly. I think she just about typifies the vast number of people who buy digi-cams without ever intending to learn how to use them. A simple exampel will suffice. She has in the past lectured me about not putting the main subject bang in the middle of the frame in my photos. Never heard of rule of thirds and did not believe me that such a strange thing exists till I showed her on the internet. (Of course I happily break this "rule" when it suits me - but the rule of thirds is still not a bad rule of thumb for the times when you can't think of anything better.) She still thinks its an odd thing to do and that I am a bit strange to do it.

When she borrows my pocket camera to photograph "her girls" (i.e. her girlfriends) for the times when they get together for a gas-bag session more often than not she lines them up to stare at the camera (no idea of photographing them in their environment) so they all have nervous smiles or startled bunny expressions and red-eye - kinda like vampire demon rabbits from hell, and of course she blazes away with the flash full on whether she needs it or not so they also have milk white complexions and frankly look like they have just come out of intensive care. (I am always put in mind of that advert with the guy sitting in front of a powerful Hi Fi system, his hair streaming backwards from the powerful sound. Her flash phtos have that quality, somehow.)

And more often than not when she shoots two of the girlfriends together one is positioned to the left, with the other on the right and she actually focuses in the middle - on the wall 20 meters behind them as she can not understand that the camera does not know that she wishes to photograph these people - not the wall. I have tried to explain the process of focusing and locking focus a hundred times but..............you get my drift, I am sure. Honestly I can see why camera manufacturers are developing cameras with idiot-proof modes that recognize human faces and take the photo with no human intervention at all. Its for people like my darling wife.

I do love her really - no REALLY!

Specifically on the subject of over use of flashes as per this article I have explained my darling's propensity to do this. The other day though, I was flabbergasted. Really flabbergaasted. She wanted me to photograph some hills in the background. It was late in the day and the hills were in shadow. The human eye could just make out some details but lacking a tripod there was no way I was going to be able to shoot anything meaningful - so I declined.

But says my darling - why not use the flash? The hills were 20 kilometers away. Say n'more.
 
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As best I can figure, most folks see photographs as a way to record an event, pure and simple. I.e., aids to memory. Not as, I presume, this crowd does: As creations that have standalone value and interest.

so, if you're only interested in documenting something, why not just point at something and expect the camera to do all the work?

(Speaking of documenting stuff, I've seen some documentary photos I know were shot by talented photographers using capable and expensive cameras with skill, and they look for all the world like shots from a cheap p&s. In the eye of the beholder, I guess.)
 
wgerrard said:
As best I can figure, most folks see photographs as a way to record an event, pure and simple. I.e., aids to memory. Not as, I presume, this crowd does: As creations that have standalone value and interest.

so, if you're only interested in documenting something, why not just point at something and expect the camera to do all the work?

(Speaking of documenting stuff, I've seen some documentary photos I know were shot by talented photographers using capable and expensive cameras with skill, and they look for all the world like shots from a cheap p&s. In the eye of the beholder, I guess.)
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I actually agree with this. all of it- but especially the last para. I have seen a lot of photographs by self styled "street photographers" and they sometimes remind me of nothing so much as amateur snapshots - but in in black and white.

I guess they figure that monochrome somehow magically translates a photo from being a bog standard ordinary snap to something marvellous and arty. Specially if it was taken with a Leica (Don't flame me folks - I own one too - and have in my time taken street photos that are just as bad. :^) )

Ever watch "Family Guy"

"Every hot girl who can aim a camera thinks she's a photographer.
Ooh, you took a black and white picture of a lawn chair
and its shadow and developed it at Sav-On. You must be so brooding and deep."

Stewie Griffin

(It pays not to take ourselves too seriously.)
 
I was in a college town yesterday that also attracts a few tourists. The streets were busy because classes resumed this week. I sat with a coffee for some time and watched the people. Most had small digitals draped on their wrists. What struck me was how little time they spent on each shot. Something would attract their eye, up came the camera, they squinted to see the image in the LCD, and clicked. Never a second shot.

I don't intend to disparage that. Most folks know alternatives are available. When shooting photos that document events you want to remember, the primary reason for the photo is, after all, to prompt memories down the road, not necessarily work as a standalone creation. I know when I see images my father or I took when I was a kid, I'm not at all interested in their value as photography.

Re: documentary photos: A photographer in my neck of the woods likes to shoot exteriors and interiors of worn out restaurants, retail shops, and the like. It's done with Leicas and other costly gear. They look to me to be shot with a disposable camera. (I should talk, though. I take pictures of doors.)
 
Loved it! Made me laugh my arse off!

The did leave out the "bringing cameras to photo gallery shows" one. I went to a show last week and there must of been 10 folks wandering around snapping shots of the shots?
What's with that?
 
Pretty funny, and (mostly) on-the-mark. Think any of that crew's been trolling over here? ;)


- Barrett
 
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I love the comments on the piece from HDR defenders saying Wired doesn't now anything about TRUE HDR. They're almost religious in their devotion to the garish technique.
 
Darkhorse said:
I love the comments on the piece from HDR defenders saying Wired doesn't now anything about TRUE HDR. They're almost religious in their devotion to the garish technique.
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I think that the same can be said of all True Belivers (tm). Consider the film clot-heads here on RFF who insist that digital photography "isn't real photography," without basis in anything resembling logic or fact. Just emotion and slavish devotion. Very cult-like.
 
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