Technique
Few things in life are as easy or creative as photographing the Huaorani - apart from the fact they’re simply amazing and wonderful to photograph, they inhabit one of those truly blessed places in the world where, despite it’s challenges, photography can take a hundred different turns and expressions.
Read MoreThis is serious - or should I say, practical - gear talk. It’s the result of multiple successful and failed efforts to take light on location (and I do not mean a city centre - I’m talking rocky outcrops in the middle of the savannah and underground rocky tunnels), what worked and what didn't and, more importantly, why. And, finally, the final kit I am currently using for everything.
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Three generations of Hamer warriors, Omo Valley (1200ws at full power, 120cm octabox, camera right)
2020 has certainly been an insanely challenging year for all of us - for photographers a time for introspection, of rethinking a million billion things, of looking back and forward, of finding new creative avenues and pathways. Stuck inside our homes, cut off from our clients, our models and our muses, unable to collaborate with all those people who give life to our ideas we were forced to look back to our past work and, in more ways than one, reevaluate it. At least, that was what I did and it led me to, well, think differently.
Read MoreEven the best laid plans…(or why I completely failed during my last trip!)
…and yes, I am fully aware of what I’m saying: my last photographic foray was a failure. Maybe not complete in the absolute sense of the word, but certainly miles away from what I had plan, what I had envisaged and what I wanted to achieve. Even to this day, more than a month later, it fills me with anger and bitterness that I don’t know how to overcome. But maybe its better if I explain.
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Images have been processed since the dawn of photography - even the most die-hard street photographer or film aficionado, more often than not, make creative choices about how to interpret the images they captured. This can be as simple as pushing or pulling the film sensitivity or cropping, others may extend to dodging and burning and more. These techniques - which are by no means simple - have resulted in the amazing pictures the previous analogue generations have bequeathed us. Jump to today and what do we find?
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How would you react if you were a passionate amateur photographer and someone told you that, despite your $60,000 worth of equipment and your recent trip to India with a “professional photographer guide”, not ALL your images are actually worth something? Probably you’d be disappointed and might even react badly - right? The thing is you’d be wrong and if you want to improve, you need to take a moment and think of what I’m trying to say here - the truth is 99% of your images are NOT great. In fact, chances are they’re not even good. No matter how much you like them. Or your friends like them and heart them in Facebook or wherever.
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In this day and age of information, where thousands of images, articles, opinions of all types and quality literally bombard us every waking moment, we become, more and more, exposed to both ends of the quality spectrum - from the amazing and awe-inspiring to the truly, beyond-words, awful. True, that has always been the case, but in the old days (and yes, this does show how old I am!) awfulness had the tendency to be filtered early, discouraged and, eventually, stamped out.
Today, where every single person can build a site or a blog, post anything they way and share it with the world (and, through that, find people who will like it and agree with it), more and more failed experiments reach us and, for me at least, make me wonder: why? Why would someone allow themselves to share something bad when there is such a plethora of incredible resources (for free for God’s sake!) to help them. Of course, the answer is obvious: today people crave attention, affection and validation of their view of the world that they don’t read, they rarely learn and, worse than all, they don’t accept opinions or criticism.
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These days, more and more, I read various “why I …” articles covering pretty much every single aspect of photography - from camera brand to lenses, bags, filters etc. In fact, before I made my change I think I actually went through almost everything that was ever written be people who had done something similar to what I was thinking of doing and, let me tell you, they were really helpful. What they were not was easy to find or written by someone who was not paid or otherwise sponsored by a company or other. So, the scepticism was still there and, truth be told, it took me a long time and a lot of effort to reach my decision (and even longer to implement).
This is why I thought I’d share this with you to possible give you yet another insight into what it means to leave the warm, comfortable (but insanely annoying) embrace of the industry standard which is Lightroom and jump into the arms of the strange, a bit quirky, niche player that is CaptureOne. True, for me it was a good switch - I have not regretted it for one moment (even though I do miss some of the features Lightroom offered) but it could have gone badly SO easily that is scares me when I look back.
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