Ok there was no Rabbi but it does make for a good beginning,
yes? A bit ago I was at a studio opening with my good
friend who is a pretty hot-shot shooter. While we were mingling about he said
something to me as I kept jumping in and out of the conversation. He noticed that some photographers are married to their cameras, always have them with them and are making photos whether they are "working" or not. At the time I was rudely looking for and making pictures with my new Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3. It’s
a neat-o little camera that is just about the coolest available light
grab-n-snap out there. Yeah I'm one of the guys who always has the camera out. He's not and that's cool.
But I digress. At that moment something the host said earlier in the
evening came back to me: he likes to have total control when he makes
photos. My friend is the same way. That got me thinking. We've had loads of conversation about our creative process and we are very different. I’ll call him an “Architect”.
Architects are building something grand. To them the photograph
is the end result of lots of planning, organizing and coordination. They have a wonderfully crafted concept that they are making reality. They work with design and engineering to make a whole that
is functional and beautiful at the same time. Their work has a
purpose and they know what it is going to be before they start. They don’t easily get distracted
from that vision. Their way of working usually isn't to go out there and see what happens; although sometimes they do. Their art is superb and they don't mind the details. If anything visualizing and negotiating the details is what makes their work what it is.
These kinda guys compose symphonies, write novels and direct amazing movies.
Then there is me. I’m the ferret. I’m always poing!-ing
around and being sucked in to some shiny new thing. I see photography as an end
to itself. The experiences that come along the way are the perks but not the
goal. The reason that I’m a photographer, and the kind of photographer that I
am, is that I love to visually wander about this amazing world of ours. I want
to be inspired by the moment. I want to be surprised. I really don’t want the
photo to look like the one in my head – I want it to be cooler and more
interesting than I would have thought up. I want to wonder "what if?" I want to look at the shot and say "How the heck did THAT happen? Sweet!". I want to be caught up in the moment and the moments that I capture. Minute details bore me and as a result my work is much more raw and loose than that of the finely polished Architects. I wish that I had their patience, focus and vision but I'm just not wired that way.
I'm an improv comic and visual vagabond.
The LX3 is going to be my best little go-everywhere-together friend for a while. It’s
tiny, has the equivalent of a 24mm f/2.0 lens, is fast to shoot, easy to work
with, has a usable ISO 400 and it shoots RAW. Oh and it does HD movies too. It’s
the perfect camera for a ferret who isn’t “on the job” because I can do a lot
with it at any time. Here’s some ferret pix from the LX3:
PoinG!