Just Sharing

Hi Everyone!!! I just wanted to share some of my work i shot for Assignment 1. So without any further explanation here it is.

Thanks For Looking!!!

Is It Art, or Is It Technique, or Is It just that he's a lucky Bastard?

Is It Art, or Is It Technique, or Is It just that he's a lucky Bastard?

<rant>

Is It Art, or Is It Skill, or Is It just that he's a lucky Bastard? This question has plagued the photographic community for over a century now. This is just a short opinion article on my personal beliefs on the subject. I was born with a very technical mind. And in general I believe that good technique is a base to all great art! Thats not to say that there isn't any great Art produced by people with little to completely no technical skill. I in general try to look at photography though lenses colored with proper technique. Every picture I take I try to maximize every pixel or piece of Silver Halide with the use of proper technique. Unfortunately, this does not always work out. Sometimes no matter what techniques you use or how hard you try, the picture just refuses to work out. If you look at this situation from a purely techniques based viewpoint, it would tell you to abandon the possible photograph due to the fact that none of the techniques work for this photograph. Therefore it must be a bad photograph. This is where your artistic mind comes into play. When you use your artistic mind you can find unorthodox solutions to problems. What I'm trying to say is that Techniques are not rules. They are guide lines meant to be bent, broken, disassembled, and then reassembled to fit the current situation. If you use nothing but pure by the book techniques while shooting you end up with a portfolio of nothing but sterile cookie cutter work. When you first start photographing the world, by the book techniques can become a suit of armor. One thing I failed to realize when I began is that it's ok to wear by the book techniques like a suit of armor but you have to remember to remove the helmet or else it will impair your vision of the world.

Now to change to the purely art perspective. From the purely Art perspective ,all by the book techniques exist purely to restrain your artistic vision and serve almost no practical purpose in this world. The content of the pictures is the only thing that matters. Technical quality is only good when it does not interfere with the picture making process. I have tried shooting this way and I must say that it's refreshing not to be bound by technique or quality standards. Not having my camera glued to the tripod really freed me to move around and explore. Unfortunately, the down side of that way of shooting is that the amount of keepers is drastically decreased compared to when I used proper techniques to photograph my subjects.

And now onto the people who say that great photographs are based purely on luck and how expensive their camera is. These are the kind of people that say that Ansel Adams was just in the right place at the right time and had a VERY, VERY, VERY, expensive camera. They are the people who think that it's the camera not the photographer who takes the photos. They equate the price of the gear they use to the quality of the photographs they take. They fail to comprehend that it's the photographers vision and use of proper technique that takes the photographs, not the camera. Luck on the other hand does play a part in photography, just not as large as you might think. Everyone has the one photograph where everything came together perfectly, and in other words you got lucky. What lots of people fail to realize is that there are infinite chances in this world, that happen everyday that we miss. Unfortunately we fail to see the world with eyes unclouded by distraction. Henri Cartier-Bresson developed the theory of The Decisive Moment which in its most pure sense is how to get the I Got Lucky moment fairly often and increase your luck ratio. Here's a good quote by him. “

The simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression... . In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little human detail can become a leitmotif.”

This is how Professional Photographers make all that luck. It's almost all skill, and actually almost no luck.

To have a great portfolio of work, is at best a difficult task. Proper use of techniques can help, as can a proper amount of artistic vision. The main point of this article is to say that Great photography is made by the photographer, not the camera, not the lens, and definitely not luck! Only a small amount of artistic vision is needed. Photography is a technical skill based art form. If you look at history, the pioneers of photography were scientist, chemists and/or people with large amounts of scientific knowledge. Photography has always been a technical based skill, and not all about art. That was added later in history. In the modern day photography has become an art form. However, it is important to remember that it's still a technical based art form. So we all need to find the correct balance between Art and proper technique. This balance is essential to the shooting of great photography.

</rant>

P.S. This was originally meant only to be a paragraph or two long, and some how it grew to a much larger size. L.O.L

P.S.S. If this article seems a little random, that's because it is. This article is me using writing as a medium to help myself figure out my own personal thoughts on the subject. Sorry if it doesn't make a lot of sense.

Introduction

Hi Everyone

My name is Given Zane. I'm 18 years old and in march I will have been studying photography for eight years. For my first blog post I decided to talk about my opinion on what photography is. Is It Art, or Is It Skill, or Is It just that he's a lucky Bastard.

Please read and Enjoy!!!