As a photographer I love taking photos. I have literally been doing it since I was 5
or 6 when my parents gave me my first camera.
It was a little Kodak Brownie. I
even still have it buried in a box somewhere.
One day when I get my office straightened out, I will have all my camera
gear on display. It’s amazing the
technological advances in camera gear over the years.
I graduated from the Brownie, to a little camera called an
Instamatic, which took cartridges of 110 mm film. I took that camera to Grand Cayman when I
visited my cousin and when I took a side trip to Cape Kennedy. I got some nice memory photos, but nothing too
Earth shattering. It was convenient to
be able to drop a cartridge of film in and take photos, but they were expensive
to buy and more expensive to process and print.
One tended to be very careful about the number of photos taken.
Then you would trundle the cartridge off to the camera store
and wait up to 2 weeks to get back the results of your work. By the time you got them back, you had
forgotten what you had shot and in most cases were disappointed in the results.
I graduated, as it were, to a 35 mm camera when I started
Graphic Arts in Grade 7 at my high school.
They gave us loaner cameras and it was, gasp! A Canon. Not that I knew anything about camera brands
back then. We would run around the
school taking photos of anything and everything, all in black and white. Occasionally we would sneak away from the
school at lunch and blast down to the Pacific Coliseum where the Canucks or
their opponents were practicing.
I watched and photographed players such as Orland
Kurtenbach, Pat Quinn, Bobby Hull, Gordie Howe, Jean Beliveau and Guy LaFleur
to name a few. This was just practice,
so of course they did not wear their games jerseys, but you knew who they
were. This was when all NHL practices
were open to the public.
A few years later when I joined the police department and
was making pretty good money, I bought my very own, first 35 mm camera. An Asahi Pentax. I started with just a base 50 mm lens and
then added a few telephoto zoom lenses.
I stayed with Pentax for several years and had several different camera
bodies. It was such a technological jump
when they came out with “auto-exposure”.
Eventually I grew restless with Pentax and decided to make
the jump to a more “pro” level camera and I made the switch to Nikon and have
stayed true ever since. It’s funny
though, what really put the bug in my ear about Nikon was the Paul Simon song, “Kodachrome”. In it he sings, “I got a Nikon camera, love
to take the photographs…”. That single
line is directly responsible for me switching to Nikon.
This is all preamble to the point of this whole
article. If there is one statement that I
and numerous other photographers hear that drives us crazy. When people see my Pro model Nikon D4s with a
very long 600 mm telephoto, they will point to it and say things like “I bet
that camera takes some nice pictures”.
Yes, it does, but truly, I have a hand in it. No matter how good the camera and lens, it
can’t take photos without some sort of human intervention.
The other thing that is said that is equally annoying, is
when people see a photo you have taken and know of your equipment, they will
say things like “that camera sure takes good photos”. Literally it is like telling a chef that his
incredible recipe is because of his stove or a musician that it’s because he or
she plays a grand piano or whatever instrument.
Don’t get me wrong, top of the line equipment in any endeavor
certainly helps, but it is the person using it which is responsible. You can give a top notch photographer an
entry level camera and they will still produce great photos. The same as a master chef can produce great
food over a campfire. It all comes down
to experience and learned technique.
Even when you get pretty good at it, you can still be
improved by suggestions from people with more experience when it comes to
making better photos. The biggest key to
it all though is that “the absolute best camera you can own, is the one you
have with you at the right time”. There
is some luck involved with being in the right place at the right time. But experience can make you better at being
in that spot at that time.
The other thing to remember is that, you are the only one
that needs to be pleased with your work.
Take suggestions from people who may be able to help you get better, but
when it comes right down to it, to hell with what anyone else thinks, as long
as you like it, nobody else’s opinion matters at all. This of course does not apply if you are
making money at the hobby. Then you have
to shoot what pleases your client.
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