Jun01
Equip Your Camera with You
There are photographers who specialize in shooting unusual lines and intersecting patterns. I am not one of them. But with that disclaimer out of the way I thought I’d share with you this image I made recently. And before I tell you more about it where I made it - you won’t believe it - I wanted to emphasize a point I’ve written about before… the single most important thing you can do to make great photographs.
It’s a spectacularly simple thing to do, frankly, and if it wasn’t I probably wouldn’t be very good at it. The trick? Always bring a camera with you wherever you go.
“Everywhere?” I can hear you ask. Yep. Pretty much.
See the thing is, learning advanced photography techniques, having a great new digital camera, knowing Photoshop and Lightroom - all those things are great ways to get the most out of the images you see. But if you don’t have that new digital SLR strapped around your neck as often as possible, one thing will happen and I guarantee it will happen with an aggravatingly predictable familiarity: you will miss shots.
I first learned this lesson years ago while in college and now I’m perfect at it. Ok, well, not perfect. But I am serious about it. And I can assure you that even so, way too many photographs have slipped past me simply because I couldn’t take them without a camera. My teeth start to grate together just thinking about it as I write this, remembering the shots I’ve missed.
Now, this week I’ve been running another poll asking a simple question: “Do You Generally Plan your Photographs?” There’s still time to cast your vote if you haven’t already. And while the results aren’t completely in, I’ve been struck to see how many of you are out there shooting just like me: on the fly.
So, for those of you who fall into this category, bringing your camera with you wherever you go is a must.
Now, back to the photograph above. This is a great example of having a camera when it counts. Not that the shot was going anywhere. It is pretty static, after all. But the rain-saturated ground and flat-lighting helped punch up the colors and intersecting lines. More importantly, the mere fact that I had a camera at all in this unusual place allowed me to grab a photograph I can safely assume most photographers would have missed.
Can you guess where this place is? Are you ready for the big reveal?
Are you thinking “fast food?”
It almost hurts me to write this since it kinda spoils the image, but the photograph above was made while standing in a McDonald’s parking lot looking next door to Burger King. Yep, I was traveling, stopped for a quick #2 “Value Meal” and as I was leaving the building back toward my car this image caught my eye. Now, most people simply don’t bring their cameras into fast-food restaurants. Maybe they do, but I haven’t seen it. It seems to me one of those places where there’s an assumption that the camera should not go with you. Sorta like a trip to the bathroom (and no, I don’t bring my camera there).
But the mere fact that I had my camera with me allowed me to make a photograph - an unusual photograph for me - that I like.
In terms of post-processing, there was very little. I had to punch up the white bricks a bit in Photoshop to make them look just a tad brighter. But I did absolutely no color enhancement. It turns out Burger King’s buildings use some pretty bright colors. And to think I’d never noticed!
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Paul @ www.photographyvoter.com Jun 1st 2007 at 10:15 am 1
Can’t argue with that advice - many times I’ve been out and about wishing I’d remembered the camera..
Equip Your Camera with You at Imaging Insider Jun 1st 2007 at 10:19 am 2
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Allen Rockwell Jun 3rd 2007 at 04:40 pm 3
You are right on with this. I carry every bit of my camera equipment with me in my truck at all times and I’m never far from my truck no matter if I’m at work, home, shopping, whatever. I also carry a small “man bag” with me everywhere I go with a Canon S3IS in it for those times when I don’t want to carry a few DSRL bodies with me.
Just a few weeks ago I happened to be at the right(?) place at the right time and got some great shots of rescue personnel extracting a truck driver from his crashed rig … I got my shots and was on the phone with local news outlets before the “real” media people even arrived with their fancy vans with dish antennas and news logos plastered on the sides … and they all got there after the driver was extracted and transported to the hospital.
Christopher Scholl Jun 3rd 2007 at 05:42 pm 4
Great going, Allen. As a television news producer myself, I can assure you that those local news stations were quite happy to have you there on the scene. Did you share any of your shots with them?
Allen Rockwell Jun 3rd 2007 at 06:07 pm 5
Christopher,
Actually I tried to share them with the local media … but since there are so many people out and about with digital cameras these days that are happy to give their photos away in exchange for seeing their name on TV or the newspaper most media outlets around here have virtually stopped paying for images.
I think some media companies have adopted the attitude that any free photo is better than a great photo that costs money.
This is a topic of one of my upcoming podcasts … “are cheap digital cameras killing the photojournalist?”
Christopher Scholl Jun 4th 2007 at 08:41 am 6
Not to get to far off-topic on this blog, but you bring up a good point about the money. I work at the network level so it’s a bit different for us, but it’s been my experience that local stations will pay when it’s a “must have” photo (ie, no one else has an image as good on a story where they simply cannot do without it). In other words, the bar is extremely high. And you’re right - it comes down to money.
Even at the network I will pay only for images I cannot do without. You can still get paid - but you gotta have a whopper of a photograph. And by whopper I don’t mean the photographic quality of the image, since camera phones can sometimes produce “whoppers” (think of some of the photos taken inside the London subway after the bombings). I mean you have to have stills or video that no one else has or can get on a story of real magnitude. Of course, that’s rare.
For the most part, we employ our own photojournalists - video cameramen - to get most of the stuff we need. But you’re right. Gone are the days when local stations, or the networks for that matter, would dole out money routinely for photographs.
Andrew Ferguson Jun 12th 2007 at 02:37 pm 7
I’d imagine it’s not a big deal to most people, but I’ve always been a bit personally frustrated that news outlets won’t pay for anything short of a stellar photograph anymore.
They’d rather take a mediocre photo for free than a great one for money.
Christopher Scholl Jun 12th 2007 at 02:44 pm 8
Yep. Simple economics, I’m afraid. Fewer television viewers=fewer advertising dollars=less money for newsroom operation. Plus, most viewers don’t care if a shot is well-lit or perfectly in focus or even white balanced. So there is very little that compels a news director to spend his money that way.
Andrew Ferguson Jun 12th 2007 at 03:28 pm 9
Curse you economics! I thought I’d escaped your evil shadow when I left university!
I know why it happens; I had a pretty in-depth discussion with a CBC news reporter about it. I just wish it wasn’t the case