Today’s thesis: Taking a photograph is easy. Making it great is difficult.
To some degree, this is the camera makers’ current problem. Since the beginning of consumer cameras they have been concentrating on making it easier to take a photo (auto exposure, autofocus, auto white balance, etc.), but then along came the iPhone, which just made it not only dirt simple to take a photo but also just as simple to share that photo with others. Checkmate.
Not so fast, Apple (and now Samsung and Google, et.al.).
It is indeed easy to take a photograph with a smartphone. It’s somewhat more difficult to take a really good photograph with a smartphone. It’s even more difficult to create a photograph taken with a smartphone that will fully sustain itself when displayed at Art Gallery sizes. It’s an Olympian task to create a truly great photo with a smartphone that will sustain at large size (but it can be done, as Apple has consistently demonstrated).
The big question for the camera makers is actually relatively simple: can they help you take a great photograph that will sustain at larger sizes? The big question for you is: do you even know what it might take to create a great photo? Or would you be like Justice Potter Stewart and only recognize one if you saw it?
All good questions, none with an easy answer.
Caution: Thom going off course…
Sometimes I think we should have a Photographers’ Cup Series. Camera makers would then be like automakers are to NASCAR or Formula 1: active sponsors who work with the drivers (photographers) to make their entries “the best.” In so doing, they discover how to make all autos better.
Of course, most of the camera makers can’t keep their products reliably connected to a Wi-Fi network, let alone providing micro-second-level wireless data that can be analyzed as to things like exposure and autofocus performance, let alone photographer inputs (button presses, dial turns, etc.). NASCAR somehow manages to do that with cars running 200mph (322kph) on a two-mile track. So much for camera companies working actively with photographers ;~).
But in essence, this is at the heart of the camera makers’ dilemma: they’re simply not working close enough with enough of their customers, and thus customers are feeling left out of the process of defining the tools they use to try to create great photos. The more spontaneous the event that will trigger you to press the shutter release, the more likely your camera is set wrong. Which leads us back to the emphasis on automatic things, such as Auto ISO.
The thing I’ve noticed in my pursuit of great images is more often than not I’m fighting the camera at some point. By fighting, I mean that I’d really like a setting to change but don’t have time (or ability, in some cases) to make that change. This is one reason why I like practicing photography in landscape scenarios: other than perhaps the light, I have time to think through and manage all possible choices, even evaluating how different choices work (or don’t work). Anyone who’s watched me work through a landscape photo knows that it isn’t about picking one position and then just getting the focus and exposure right. I move a lot, I investigate different angles, I move things (I move them back when done), I evaluate near/middle/far relationships, and much, much more.
Okay, I’m almost back on course…
“Good enough” is not generally something that makes for great photos. I look at “good enough” automation, when it works, as being a simplification I was able to ignore while making sure that the primary things that make the photo great are nailed. Whether that’s timing, a relationship, a dramatic light change, or something else, sometimes I can allow a “good enough” automation aspect to sneak in because, without it, I might fail to catch that fleeting thing that’s really driving the photo.
To that end, I’m a strong believer in anticipation. I often ask workshop students “what do you want to happen?” Often they have an answer. Well, if you’re not already set for the thing you want to happen, you’re not likely to photograph it well, are you? Your camera should not be set for the last thing that happened, but rather the next thing that might (and you want to) happen.
I see this all the time at workshops: despite my reminding everyone about it as we drive from camp, we encounter some action first thing in the morning only for at least one student to discover their camera was set for last night’s sundowner. Moment missed.
The temptation, of course, is to just set everything on “auto” and let the camera deal with all the decisions other than moment and composition. But what if that moment is fleeting and the auto shutter speed was too long? Of focus was put in the wrong spot? In general, “auto” is not “good enough” for me 95% of the time.
We’ve all seen great photos taken by virtually every type of camera, from smartphone to top level pro ILC. I’d argue that it wasn’t the camera that made the photo great, but rather recognition and control by the photographer that did.
One fallacious argument I see all the time is this: “Look at all those great smartphone photos I see. Smartphones are therefore great cameras.” Not so fast.
First, the volume of smartphone photos that are taken is huge, and far dwarfs that of those taken by dedicated cameras. There are orders of magnitudes more smartphones out there than cameras, and they’re more convenient to carry, too. However, when someone shows me a “great” smartphone photo I sometimes ask to see their entire photo roll. Oops. One great capture among hundreds or thousands of not so great ones. And closer examination of the great one shows it was “enhanced” (either by the camera itself, or via filters/presets after the fact).
Recently more than one person has sent me email saying that they just want the automatic aspect of their camera—whether smartphone or dedicated—to be “perfect.” For it to just do the right thing all the time. That’s usually followed by the notion that the slightly newer generation silicon and tighter integration of it favors the smartphone.
Personally, I think Apple iPhones have gotten slightly worse as cameras in recent models. The behind-the-scenes manipulation is making the images feel more fake, and less seen. I pretty much always get a “better" rendering by using raw and doing post processing on my own. Of course, I do the same thing with my dedicated cameras, too. Perhaps I sniffed too many darkroom fumes and read too many Ansel Adams books along the way ;~).
I’ve written it before, but it bears repeating: you (or the camera) make hundreds of decisions for any individual photo. The more you skip over (or automate) those decisions, the less likely the photo is as you intended it. The less a photo is like you intended it, the more I’d argue that it can’t really be great, because the act of seeing and capturing is an individual event, not a team sport, and the two things (seeing, capturing) have to have a single entity that is controlling the decisions to be anything other than random chance.
Finally, there’s this (warning, going off course again, pardon the pun): many don’t understand the sport of golf. You could, for instance, use swing aids or build a robotic device to get better distance and accuracy. What would be the joy in getting a hole in one on every par 3 hole, though? You’d divert the whole sport from training and discipline to building equipment skills. To some degree, that’s what smartphones are doing to photography: diverting the experience to something different.
I was recently at a very well-known (and popularized by at least one feature film) tourist spot. As you might expect, smartphones tended to dominate among those walking up to take photos. Yet even among those with dedicated cameras, most were using them to take selfies (or us-ies). For that, any type of camera was probably good enough. Yet, among the hundreds of people I observed, there were two I found (other than me) that were trying to make a great photo of the landmark that was attracting attention in the first place. Two folk among hundreds who were concerned about light, depth, and other factors that would make a good photo closer to a great one.
It was easy to identify those two, too, as they worked at a different speed than the selfie crowd, they didn’t go to the same places, the looked around more, and so on. Which brings me to my last thought today: what makes a great photo is thinking about what makes a great photo ;~). As I’ve said all along, it’s not the camera, as cameras have been highly competent for as long as I can remember.
So, until your smartphone or camera can prove that it can actually think, I believe that great photos will still be made by photographers, not cameras.
