Am I a real photographer any more? I have a cupboard full of very expensive photographic equipment which I haven’t touched in months, I think I still may well have some images on one of the, I can’t remember the name, oh yes compact flash card, and I just can’t be bothered to upload them. Does this mean I am no longer a real photographer.
Well like ever thing in life context is king. If you believe that a ‘real’photographer has to be weighed down by the latest hi-tech gizmos from Japan then yes I am not a real photographer – actually I have never been that bothered by the latest offerings it has just been the type of photography I have been doing over the past few years was easier with the equipment. Well this is passing and my creative endeavours are moving on. I am making photographs but are they real?
I guess by now you may well have worked out where I am going this. It is an oldie but good, an old chestnut if you will but, drums roll, the audience gasps, you don’t need to have expensive equipment to produce real or great photographs. You just need the imagination and just a slice of luck. Which brings me round to the iPhone camera.
When I tell people that my camera of choice at the moment they tend to give me that look which you give to the widow bearing up after her loss, sympathy with the knowledge that she will get over it and move on. Well I may get over it but I really do feel we have all been sucked into a pointless mega pixel arms race. The photographic industry are only too willing to pander to this race – after all if they don’t then we might all realise that this really is a case of the emperor’s new clothes – digital cameras have now reached a point when they are over powered and over bearing. We really should step back and ask is it worth all this money we throw at cameras and equipment? I suspect the answer is, apart from some very specialist user, is no.
I have written before asking why should anyone want a camera that produces images of 50 mega pixel with an unimaginable bit depth? I cannot understand what they will get out of this other than the cache of using expensive equipment. There images won’t be any better in any real sense – the content will be the same and no post production process can deal with the colour detail that such cameras produce – anyone who has used a CMYK printing process will know that this really does limit the gamut of what colours can be reproduced. Even the highest level ink jets can just about reproduce the gamut from sRGB, don’t even try RGB as you will very quickly find yourself outside of the gamut and your gamut warning goes all strange on you.
This is rambling on and I think I should stop. However, I really we should try and concentrate on the ideas and not the technology. It is after all photography not pixel counting & bit depth that we are trying to practice. I suppose this is a very round about way of saying I am using my iPhone almost exclusively to make my photographs at the moment. I am also aware that in a month or so I may well change my mind totally and be back joining the bean counters and wondering how I can justify spend all this money on the next great think. Oh what a wonderful thing it is to be a human. We can contradict ourselves almost in the same breath and see nothing wrong with that. I believe it is called the human condition.
One final thing. The photograph is of my latest attempt at painting. The original is poor but the camera makes it better. Who said the camera never lies?
Simon Marchini LRPS
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