Pro Pix Tips: As some of you might have noticed, I am a religious kinda guy. And I'm sure that whether you are or not you remember as I do the WWJD (What Would Jesus Do) thing that was so popular a while back and I guess still is to some degree. Well, for this our first ever Pro Pix Tips (isn't it so exciting?) I want to have my own WW thing. Let's first start by having a question: "What's a good picture to take?" There are so many things that go into what makes a good picture and over time I will hit on several of them. But there is a fundamental, down and dirty starting point that you should consider before you take a picture. It's something that you should do after you decide what you're going to take a picture of. For example, lets say that you are at a park and you want to take a picture of a flower. Before you point your camera at anything, you need to find some place were you can set down where you can see the flower you want to take a picture of. Sooner or later some tourist is going to see that same flower and take it's picture. Then another tourist will do the same thing. Take note of the angle and positioning of the tourist pictures being taken. Why? Because that is the pictures you don't want to take. Why? Because it is these pictures that are repeated over and over again. They're usually the normal garden variety common shots that are taken. For your pictures to be good they need to be different or unique. Taking a picture of a flower from a position where you have just walked up to it is boring and the way everyone looks at the flower. Find a different view or angle from which to take that picture. Seeing things from a different perspective is a fundamental key in planning a shot. As an exercise try taking a picture of a common item, a park bench, picnic table, trash can, or any thing that normally wouldn't be that interesting as a "common" picture. Look for ways (more than one) to find a different angle, view, and position to get the shot. The object is to add interest to a subject that doesn't have much on it's own. How many different shot can you get? I believe you'll be surprised. Oh, so what about the WW thing. Well, one of the questions you should ask yourself before you take your picture should be WWATT, What Would A Tourist Take? DON'T TAKE THAT ONE! It would be a Cardinal Sin!
(Don't you just feel all getty inside?)
Ok, now for the rest of the post. Back in the pre-digital days, hiring a professional photographer seemed to be more of a necessity than it does now a days. It wasn't as seemingly goof proof as it appears now with digital. The equipment and knowledge level seemed out of reach for most folks. It was tricky at best to make sure you got the picture right sense you couldn't be sure until the film was developed. And then there was the expense and time involved. $500 to over $1000 just to have the proofs developed not to mention the editing of the proofs and the reprinting of those proofs with color corrections, well, cheep it was not. It was somehow a bit more understandable why wedding photos cost so much. Then came the digital age. Once the cost of a digital camera reached a level where it was affordable and people where able to set them on "A" for automatic or "P" for professional (that's not what it stands for by the way) things began to take a bit of a change. Part of the change came from the pros themselves. Even though their expenses decrease many didn't lower their pricing because the cost of software and computers and the time and expense the pros felt they were adding offset what they were saving on film development. True or not the problem quickly became that those non pros were able to take a "good" picture with their "good" camera and put them on a disk so they could be printed at some inexpensive photo center. Remember the old saying that if something sounds to good to be true it probably isn't true? Well in reality someone can take pictures at your wedding and give you a disk and charge you far less than what most pros charge. If that was the whole story than that would be a unhappy ending of the pro but it's not. To start with you might take this opportunity to reread the PPT at the top of this post. Than is there going to be any editing. How about quality lighting. How about catching the majority of the event. Most of the weekend photographers I have heard about only take enough pictures to mostly fill a disk and how many of them are usable and quality of the contents? How many pictures where missed? The problem is that you have nothing else to compare those pictures too. I recently talked to a person who has taken wedding pictures and senior pictures for a few years now. They had actually had to fly across county to do one wedding. As we talked it became quite clear that this person knew very little when it came down to photography. Basic camera functions seemed vary removed from them. Yet there were those out there who where having some of the most important picture in their lives taken by someone who didn't understand much about photography in my view but I'm told they have "a good eye" for it. And if that's not enough evidence for you then let me add this. This individual was taking the few pictures they were taking (the good, bad, and ugly ones) and putting them on a common disk they purchased at a office supply type store and gave it to their customer. Why is that bad? Because most experts say that the pictures stored on those common types of disk could fail to maintain those images in a usable state after a short number of years. To be sure that those images maintain there viability they should be placed on disk designed for long storage. Anything else could allow you to loose the only images of your special event allowing for your memories to be at risk as well.
All of this is a lot like bowling. The object is to roll a ball down a lane and knock over all 10 pins for a strike. While pros don't score a perfect game of 300 all the time they do get a lot of strikes. Now it's not uncommon to find someone who has never bowled a day in their live, take them bowling and have them at some point knock all the pins down for a strike at least once. But just because they did what a pro did by knocking all the pins down with one throw doesn't make them ready for the Pro Bowlers Tour.
I could go on and on but I've already been that this for a week now. I'm not trying to bad mouth anyone. My point here is to try to inform you that taking pictures isn't as easy as it looks. There is more to it than pushing a button and the focus be good. As I said in the first post, who would you want operating on you? A trained and skilled doctor who does this work every day and makes their living at it, or someone else who normally works another profession and does this as a hobby on the weekend after reading a book or two about it and has a sharp knife and a big bandage? Remember, a memory is a terrible thing to waste. Don't gamble with more than you can afford to loose! If it's important enough to do, it's important enough to be remembered.
Have a great day everyone! Richard
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