Sunset over Holmes Lake in Lincoln, NE. Click
image to enlarge. (Photo by Lesley Jackson Scher) |
Luckily, I actually did know something about photography.
But not as much as
Lesley, apparently. In spite of the fact that technically I know more than she
about rules of thirds and golden means and horizon placement and F-stops and
reciprocity and the like, she can take (a real photographer would say "make")
better photos than I. Consistently. And she can do it with a three-year-old
Android smart phone camera, even when I'm using the fancy Olympus digital with
the awesome zoom lens and the dozens of nifty attachments that I just had to
have.
Actually, I should
have known that the technology doesn't make the photographer. When Ansel Adams
taught classes, he often had his students peering through cardboard paper towel
rolls for days before he allowed them to use real cameras. It was a low-tech
approach, but what he was doing was teaching them to really see what they were looking at. And when my students would ask if they should get motor
drives (sigh… it's a film-camera thing; you
young people wouldn't understand), I knew what they really wanted. They wanted to be able to go
home and tell Mom and Dad that Mr. Scher had said that they should run out and
get motor drives for class. (They made a slick, ratchet-y, whirring sound that
today's cameras approximate electronically. All the cool people had motor
drives.) But I didn't tell them that. I
told them that they didn't need motor drives. I told them that if they were
taking bad photos, a motor drive would simply allow them to take bad photos
much more quickly. And I was right.
But now, I have
digital cameras. And they do indeed
allow me to take bad photos much more quickly than before. Why, even with a motor drive, I could never have taken
bad photos this quickly! It's a miracle of modern technology!! Digital cameras
have made mediocrity attainable, and much more easily than ever before. This is
a great thing for those of us striving for mediocrity.
TANGENT WARNING: By
the way, I really miss darkrooms. The slightly musty, humid air. The smell of
fixer and stop-bath. Strips of negatives wiped down with Photo-Flo and hung
with clothespins on a wire strung across the (always too-small) space. Trays
and test strips, filters and squeegees. The orange or red bulb casting a dim
light. The paper safe with the door that always jammed. Enlargers with
motorized heads—not that I could ever have afforded one of the motorized monsters.
When we moved to Lincoln in 1992, one of the first things I did was . . . Well, I was going to say that I built a darkroom, but what I really did was cause a darkroom to be built. By a very
intimidating fellow whose first comment when looking at the framing I'd done so
far was, "So, hey… OK if I tear all of this crap out?" So my
contribution was limited to writing a check. Actually, I probably didn't even
do that; most likely, Lesley wrote the
check. (Lesley is not only a better photographer than I, she is also much
better with money.)
So, go figure . .
. Apparently the technology isn't what
makes a good photographer. Or programmer. Or mechanic or teacher or cook or
writer. And I guess that's worth keeping in mind.
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