| Photography Forum: Philosophy Of Photography Forum: |
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Q. Guilt Over Photographic Cheap Thrills
Asked by Patricia Lee
(K=336) on 3/4/1999
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Recently I was printing enlargements from color negatives taken last summer, when the college darkrooms were closed for renovation. Although the prints were just snapshots which I am giving to friends, I have to confess I was delighted to be printing them. Yet I felt slightly guilty, as if I was doing something less than honorable in printing mere snapshots, some of them taken with a P&S camera.
Yes, generally the images I take using a tripod and manually-set camera are indeed better than those taken with a hand-held P&S. Yes, for landscapes and macros the former is the only real choice. But for snapshots of group bike rides where carrying a tripod and heavy camera would drag everyone down (me by weight and bulk, the group by waiting for The Photographer to take the picture, dammit!), a P&S works nicely.
My point is that sometimes we forget the simple pleasures of just grabbing a picture that will make friends smile because "they were there." Let's not feel too guilty about that!
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Gary Watson
(K=1665) - Comment Date 3/4/1999
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Horses for courses, I guess. I think it's easy(for me, at least)to succumb to technical overkill for casual shots of family and friends. It can even get axiomatic, i.e., SLR+tripod+incident meter=superior results. Maybe. P&S cameras simply don't intimidate subjects quite the way a whanking big SLR mit zoom lens does. The result is often more natural looking shots. I use fast prime lenses with fast film for candids and try hard not to work too hard on casual shots. Images of friends and family, regardless of gear, endure long after any recollection of what you caught them with.
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Chris Hawkins
(K=1508) - Comment Date 3/4/1999
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Should you feel guilty because you took some pictures which reminded you and your friends of some great times you shared? NO! When your friends are old and gray, those photographs may give their decedents insight into their lives which would have been lost without your P&S pictures.
Also remember that Henri Cartier-Bresson took a few "snapshots" without a tripod, 3 bodies and 10 lens which have stood the test of time.
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Alan Gibson
(K=2734) - Comment Date 3/4/1999
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And don't forget that H.C-B's camera, the Leica, was the P&S of its day, with a stupidly small film format that some people thought would never catch on.
Patricia's point has got me thinking. What defines a snapshot? A photo taken with almost no thought, casually, 'just grabbing a picture', with a minimum of equipment, featuring those people close to us, with little if any appeal to other people? In that case, I shoot ten rolls of snapshots a month. I take this self-assigned work very seriously, and some of the resulting photos are good. I certainly never feel guilty about it.
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Tony Rowlett
(K=1575) - Comment Date 3/4/1999
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The fact that you spent the time and energy and brain power to print these so called "snap shots" takes them out of the "mere snapshot" realm, and places them into the "this is photography" realm. I find many snapshots are perfect the way they are: worthy of having been taken in the first place, worthy of being printed with your time and materials, and worthy to be looked at an enjoyed. They're no longer snapshots! They're pictures of your life. They are pertinent.
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tom meyer
(K=2752) - Comment Date 3/4/1999
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I'd call this "sweating the small stuff".
You're thinking too much. And it's retro thinking, too, out-guessing yourself.
Let's hear it for guilt free snap shooting! And why don't you stick on some of those goofy "thought balloons" from the minilab for some zen non-sequiter text, no one will know where your coming from, then!...t
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Gerry Siegel
(K=927) - Comment Date 3/4/1999
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I think of a 'snapshot' as a photo that is incidental to the day's activity. But the value is measured on a different scale-not always stricter- than when I consciously set out to "make pictures," or am Ye Designated Photographer. Serious photography is any photography. When it pleases me and pleases others it works. Otherwise it is an exercise to keep my index finger warmed up.
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james mickelson
(K=7344) - Comment Date 3/5/1999
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Patricia, You should see the picture of my daughter when she was 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12......! If you don't shoot it and print it you lose it and it ain't commin' back. Shoot away. It's good therapy. You're only guilty if you don't pull the trigger. I even take my polaroid to the beach and give the prints away for free. The tourist kids love it, not to mention the out of town babes. It's a hoot. And I dress 40's and do the same with my Speed. It's too cool.
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John MacPherson
(K=1342) - Comment Date 3/5/1999
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A very accomplished professional woman photographer friend of mine is VERY good at pictures of people, and her work is published widely. For years she has used, for a lot of her candid work, two small Nikon AF zoom compacts. One has colour slide, and the other b&w. Her pictures are often stunning. The previous comment about the subjects not being intimidated is valid. AND she has no heavy garbage, oops sorry GADGET bag, to carry and to get in the way. JOHN
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ray tai
(K=310) - Comment Date 3/5/1999
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For the type of photography I like to do, absolute technical quality is not really that important. One of my best photos was taken with a cheapo Olympus Stylus with built in flash. Yes I wish I had a Leica at the time but I would have missed the shot if I had to focus and fumble with exposure. There are situations where small automatic cameras are more useful.
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King Winkie
(K=186) - Comment Date 3/30/1999
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I have the opposite problem. I have three kids. My middle kid had an undiagnosed learning disability that made life pretty miserable for about five years. During that time, I took very few snap shots. Since I take snapshots during good times, I just didnt feel like it. Now, things are fine and I wish I had more pictures. Those years are not coming back.
A problem that I had with snap shots is that although I had a "state of the art" (at the time) Olympus point and shoot, I didnt always get what I was trying for. I still compared everything I did with what would have happened with my heavy, bulky Nikon. A couple of years ago I bough a Minolta Vectis V1. I use it like a point and shoot (although it is about the most expensive point and shoot you can find). It uses APS film and is water proof. I always take it with me when the kids are sledding, going on a hay ride, picking apples, or anytime that a bulky camera would be inconvenient. In fact, it may have saved my life! A few months ago I was photographing my kids sledding. While framing a shot, I was hit from behind by a kid in an inner tube moving very fast. It hit me so hard that it completely knocked me up in the air. As a man with screwed up priorities, my first priority was to save the camera and I clung to it as I hit the ground. If it had been my F3 (with motor drive, tripod adapter) I most certainly would have been injured worse then I was.
Oh yea, when I was 16 I had a photograph on exhibit and was called "One of New Englands most talented young photographers" (I suck now, oh well). The photograph that got me the most notoriety was NOT taken with my Nikkormat. It was taken using a $10.00 126 cartridge camera.
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Mani Sitaraman
(K=312) - Comment Date 4/1/1999
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As the years go by, my outdoor, landscape and macro pictures, which I took by the thousands in my tweties gather dust; every technically awful shot of friends of family still gets a happy response from the subject, and increasing attention from me.
I used to labor (usually in vain) to get my friends or family to gather with the lights off to watch my attempts to be Galen Rowell. When I would succeed, the slide shows would end with silence or a "Hm, interesting".
A few years ago I realized that if the end result of my photography was to share, I'd better start taking pictures of people. Snapshots, slides, all get immediate viewer involvement if the subject is known people.
Getting the shot is very important; I quickly realized my Rollei 6003 would yield technically perfect shots of bored and fidgety looking subjects; my wife's P&S did much better.
People and family photography, on the fly, as a record of time passing, is technically and artistically as challenging as you care to make it. As mentioned above; look at Cartier-Bresson (or Lartigue).
In this area, as in photojournalism, as Dirck Halstead, White House photographer says, (paraphrasing now...) "a bad picture is better than no picture". Equipment can get in the way all too easily.
Get the pictures, with whatever you have at hand. If "being there"is hampered by clunky equipment, leave it at home, take a P&S or a disposable and get in the middle of things.
No reason at all to be guilty.
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Brian Reeves
(K=15) - Comment Date 4/28/1999
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For me, the problem isn't guilt over using a PS camera. It is looking at "less than perfect" photos and thinking "Gee, I should have used a fill flash" or "look at that tree branch sticking out of his head."
My wife doesn't see these things, but she doesn't waste (er, spend) as much time reading photo.net and other web sites. She just thinks it is cool to get lots of pictures of the baby. Well, she'd just as soon I didn't take quite so ~many~ pictures :-)
I need to relax and enjoy; I agree with another poster that said we're thinking too much.
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