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 p.4 #19 · Overshooting vs decisive moment /// Is the end product all that matters? | |
hardlyboring wrote:
I didn't start this thread to take sides or bash and I am going to adhere to that mentality.
i will offer my own personal sentiments which most people will scoff at but that is alright.
I found/find myself growing tired of digital cameras. Not so much digital in a sense that digital is better than film but more in the sense that when I am holding a digital camera I am basically holding an everlasting machine gun computer image maker. I personally found myself overshooting just because quite frankly I could. It became a rather mindless activity. Of course we are always attempting to be creative etc. but I found myself composing shots and then just shooting not really thinking about expressions, other things in the frame, etc. I sometimes found myself not really taking anything in to account other than just lining up the shot and blasting away.
That troubled me a bit.
For me going back to film (which I love anyway and just needed to convince myself I could actually shoot weddings on film) was the solution.
Sure I could have taped my LCD screen and used smaller cards etc. but at the end of the day the limitations film brought were a welcome way to boost creativity and also reenergize my drive to improve.
Just because we can take less shots on a digital camera doesn't mean we will. Just because we can leave our phone at home and disconnect from FB and texts doesn't mean we will do that either.
I still do shoot digital and I am plenty guilty of "overshooting" with my D3 no doubt. What I found interesting was that after taking the necessary time to really give film a go I shot less, didn't miss shots, was more connected to the events, was more creative, saw and photographed more moments, and had way more fun doing it.
I wonder what some of the old time shooters would think about being able to blast away 10,000 images without consequence? I do sometimes feel that in the "overshoot" their is a little bit of preciousness lost for each image. When we were limited by the shots on the roll and by the expense of film every shot taken was precious and treasured. Sometimes today it seems like we just shoot away without real regard for what it means to be a "photographer". When Robert Capa was on Normandy Beach he shot right around 106 total shots. Of those 106 shots 11 survived. Those 11 photos are some of the most famous ever taken. 11 total shots to sum up D-Day.
It's sort of the same reason we use albums today. Do we need albums? Not really use your iPad or Mac Book Air or Kindle Fire whatever to see the photos. Their are hundreds, maybe thousands to scroll through...no problem its easy on the tablet.
If you have an album chances are you only have one album. A very very very important family heirloom. Not a bunch of albums on FB and pinterest, one real album. When you have one of something it is precious.
So for me shooting film (not that film has anything to do with it), and shooting less really does make each shot a little bit more important. What about missed shots that I might have gotten with a larger digital burst or whatever? I am doing my client a disservice? In my short experience with mixing film in with digital at weddings I find that I can just as easily get it done on film as I can with digital. Quite frankly it doesn't matter what I use... If I am sucking at taking photos it really doesn't matter if I shoot less or more I am still sucking at taking photos. And yes that does happen, sometimes I think "damn I suck today". Sure it happens to a lot of us.
Like I said in my original post that happy clients are really all that matters. Everyone has a different shooting style, brand, and philosophy. All perfectly fine. Shoot whatever you want, however you want and make good images. End of story.
That is what I have gathered in my time thinking about all this. ...Show more →
Well said!
As an old time dinosar that learned on film and the people that have never processed a roll in their life lambast and ridicule now, it's refreshing to hear someone speak of the difference in shooting film and digital that the upstarts can level their normal sarcastic defences at.
I really don't buy all this " Capture every single moment, expression, look, fart, peok action and everything else from every possible angle" idea.
Where it really falls down for me is what you touch on. Many of these people so indignant about capturing the look everytime somone breathes don't even do albums. they simply deliver the pics on disk, USB or just upload them.
To me that's like crapping on about how superiour your Bugatti Veyron is over every other car on the road and running retread or space saver tyres on the thing.
It's evident many of the high frame number shooters don't do albums because they would realise that an album with even 100 pictures in it is a bloody big one and there is no way you could put 500 or 1500 pics in it.
They go to all this trouble to capture these moments, peak action, expressions etc and then don't even present their efforts or present the job to anywhere near the same degree of quality.
No doubt that will set a few off again but when someone can prove to me that the average computer monitor, TV, facewaste page or Icrud can reproduce anything like the richness of colours and subtle tones and have anything like the emotional attachment and wow factor of a properly printed image in a quality album, I'll change my mind. That won't be happening any time soon.
And despite all the advances in technology, I don't believe there is anything like the serenity of sitting down with a book/ album and just enjoying the simplicity of thumbing through it. I spose the younger generation would laugh at that idea as well.
I wonder what some of the old time shooters would think about being able to blast away 10,000 images without consequence?
Well they would probably think that was a miracle but when you told them that people were taking 2-10,000 shots at a wedding, they would probably piss their pants laughing after they realised you weren't joking.
I was only talking to a friend today about this thread and some others I have read with regard to the numbers of pics being shot at a wedding. He though I made a mistake when I said I had read of people taking 2500 pics as a matter of course and others taking up to 12 thousand. He said don't you mean 1200? I said no, 12K. It took some convinceing him I had not made a mistake.
His next comment was " and they aren't embarrassed to admit this?
The next thing he asked was about video and what the quality of stills was that could be pulled from them and why these shooters didn't just shoot video and be done with it? I didn't have an answer to the last part but said I though I had seen somewhere that affordable cameras were capeable of having 6MP stills pulled from the frames. My friend said what was wrong with that? I have plenty of perfectly fine pics taken on 4 and 6 Mp camera's. I agreed I do as well.
Anyway, it appears we are in the minority and the approved train of thought is not commonsurate with ours. Other people think they are doing the best job taking thousands of pics and I'm not by only taking hundreds and I can't get my head round after finally accepting these numbers how the shooters aren't even printing them.
Things sure have got spread out within just the one market.
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| Sep 02, 2014 at 03:55 AM |
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I don't feel that I'm overshooting and trying to get one good shot out of 100, I think I'm overshooting the same shot and I don't know why I do that. Worried it won't be focused, worried that eyes are droopy or what I don't know...Insecure maybe? I have no idea. 
