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‹ Photo Notes · 14 srpna, 2013
What do you think is the most common and at the same time worst mistake photographers make when photographing people? Maybe try to think about it before you read on. Perhaps we’ll agree, or something else will occur to you. This is how I see it…
I keep encountering how much photographers fuss over technique, absolute beginners as well as those who call themselves professionals. They devote a lot of time and attention to setting up lights, reflectors, the shape and size of softboxes, camera settings and so on.
So where do they go wrong?
They don’t look at the person being photographed!
They simply lock the model (but also the newlyweds or anyone being portrayed) into the little frame of the shot. They don’t communicate, and by that I don’t mean only talking; communication here means creating harmony, waiting for a moment worth capturing. What matters to them is how sharp the model is, how she is lit (often more than how she is lit), but they don’t see that they have optically shortened a beautifully long-legged model’s legs by 10 cm, that they have placed her in an unnatural and ugly pose and captured her with an expression from which it isn’t clear whether she is perhaps trying to push out yesterday’s heavy dinner.
Exaggeration? Not at all. There are lots of such photos around, and precisely the photographer’s ability to devote himself to the subject makes the big difference between a good and a bad photo.
I no longer know where it was or who the author was, but just recently I came across an article describing some way of lighting outdoors. The photographer went into the technical part in detail, but the resulting photograph was terrible, largely precisely because he „didn’t see“ the model. Either he was not capable of it at all, or the technical solution occupied him so much that he didn’t manage both at once. Under the article there was quite a lively discussion, but everyone again dealt only with technique; nobody paused over the terribly photographed model.
Technique should be a routine matter for the photographer, one he doesn’t have to ponder at length. Conversely, every model is unique and demands that much more attention. Besides communication, that includes the right choice of focal length and angle of view, observing which flaws of the figure or face to hide and how, conversely, to show the best.
There are even excellent photographers who hardly care about technique at all, and yet their photographs are superb. They devote the maximum of their attention to what or whom they photograph. And that should be the essence of photography.
What is your opinion?
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