I went to a talk by Don McCullin last night. He's over 90 now, but still looking good, but a bit deaf and calling himself 'frail,' despite standing for an hour to deliver his talk. Of course, he showed his images as he talked about his life as a photographer.
Among the tidbits:
- he loves the darkroom work as much as he loved the shooting and he's very particular about his results in the darkroom; he said his house is filled with about 10,000 prints; also said that there are some of images he hasn't printed in 30 years and never wants to print again, because there are too many traumatic thoughts related to working with the image;
- he doubts young photographers in his field can make a career of it now;
- when asked about his gear and technique, he flatly refused to answer and said he was always bad about the gear and the technique and nowadays needs someone else to download the images on his computer (now, part of that avoidance may have been because he was in the Leica Gallery for the event and I doubt he ever used a Leica in his life: he started with a Rolleicord as he mentioned in his talk and on his Wikipedia page it says a Nikon saved his life by blocking the bullet meant for him...);
- he also said his kind of weather is the overcast British type; he called it 'Wagnerian clouds.' He adds to that by using a filter, most likely a red filter for his B&W landscapes.
Always interesting to see your heroes in real life.
What I think he was getting at is that it really doesn't matter what you shoot with. Feel free to go look at at the work of so many photographers who use the very best gear, with the most fantastic bokeh, the most ethereal rendering, the greatest dynamic range, the least amount of noise, and 99.9% of it is completely meaningless dreck.
Don shoots as much with his heart as he does with his camera. His images have depth because he is himself deeply empathic and emotional.
We obsess over this lens and that camera, but in reality the only thing that matters is whether or not you can infuse how you feel about what you're looking at into the photograph. Do you care about what you're looking at, or are you just making a pretty picture that shows off the quality of your gear?
Very few photographers want to talk about the psychology and emotions behind the work, but that's where it all comes together.
What I think he was getting at is that it really doesn't matter what you shoot with. Feel free to go look at at the work of so many photographers who use the very best gear, with the most fantastic bokeh, the most ethereal rendering, the greatest dynamic range, the least amount of noise, and 99.9% of it is completely meaningless dreck.
Don shoots as much with his heart as he does with his camera. His images have depth because he is himself deeply empathic and emotional.
We obsess over this lens and that camera, but in reality the only thing that matters is whether or not you can infuse how you feel about what you're looking at into the photograph. Do you care about what you're looking at, or are you just making a pretty picture that shows off the quality of your gear?
Very few photographers want to talk about the psychology and emotions behind the work, but that's where it all comes together. ...Show more →
Yes. There was such a contrast between his work and the work on the wall of the gallery, which was technically superior and shot with Leica, but didn’t have the visual impact of great images.
What I think he was getting at is that it really doesn't matter what you shoot with. Feel free to go look at at the work of so many photographers who use the very best gear, with the most fantastic bokeh, the most ethereal rendering, the greatest dynamic range, the least amount of noise, and 99.9% of it is completely meaningless dreck.
Don shoots as much with his heart as he does with his camera. His images have depth because he is himself deeply empathic and emotional.
We obsess over this lens and that camera, but in reality the only thing that matters is whether or not you can infuse how you feel about what you're looking at into the photograph. Do you care about what you're looking at, or are you just making a pretty picture that shows off the quality of your gear?
Very few photographers want to talk about the psychology and emotions behind the work, but that's where it all comes together. ...Show more →
In the end, it doesn’t matter much at all what brand you shoot, which body you choose, or whether you have the lens with the Very Best Specs.
What maters is what and how you see and your ability to express that “seeing” in the form of photographs.
Understanding the technology and how it works is very useful for photographers, but turning the gear specs into an obsession is an unhelpful distraction.
Gear on these gear-centric boards is a distraction precisely to avoid the messiness of emotions. Some embrace it, others would prefer separation from it. Certainly this affects the impact images have for the viewer, but here too it is very subjective, how an image resonates, emotionally. I'd argue that most images are created for the pleasure of the person who made them, therefore tend to have a narrow range of general appeal. Such images may not appear to have value to wider audiences, but they hold value for their creators.
Equipment and operator are relatively separate variables. Why people are often comparing two variables in any multi-part system without proper constraints I will never understand.
If you hire a photographer then you want to see their portfolio and provide the requirement for the output.
If you are the photographer (operator) then the choice of gear is up to you.
It's rather obnoxious when people complain that you are not a (insert your favorite adjective) photographer so you should not have good cameras or lenses that are sharp to the edges. It's my money that I worked hard for, and what I care about doing.
The bar for IQ is rather different depending the purpose. In the mid-late 20th century medium format and large format were for used often for varying levels of high IQ. Minature formats like 135 were for portability and speed, not high IQ.
Although it's interesting what people did in old times to capture images, there are far more options today. large format has been replaced by digital MF, MF has been replaced by high-res FF/FX digital and so forth. If I were such an old guy I would not be going on about what cameras I used 50-60 years ago either.
Maybe I'm one of the few that dislikes people posting the EXIRF data in non-technical posts. It should not matter the camera or settings.
It's very rare (for me anyway) for the camera to influence my photography. There are exceptions, of course, such as panoramic cameras, but for the most part I can make a photo that I want with any camera I have in my hand. The important thing is that the camera feels comfortable to you, and you can work its controls easily and quickly.
