Professional Dangers of Digital Photography

Last nigh I managed to catch an interview on CSPAN with National Geographic photographers Sam Adell and Rob Kendrick (this was on CSPAN’s BookTV show, a re-broadcast from November 04, 2004). The topic was portrait photography and during the Q&A session that followed a very interesting set of questions began to be asked regarding the impact if digital photography on the profession.

Rob Adell admitted that he had not made the transition and at the time of his retirement from National Geographic he was shooting primarily in 35mm format but he had some very interesting thoughts about the profession in general and some of the dangers of digital photography specifically. This of course sparked heightened attention from myself.

To set the foundation, typically a photo assignment would play out thus.

- photographer arrives on location and shoots the assignment generally trying to capture some very specific images, moods, etc. on film.

- All film is then presented to the photo editorial staff where they cull the body of work down (often in several editing sessions) to the final set of images to be used for the project. The photographer often but not always has input during the editorial process.

Sam related a story about an experience early in his career (some time during the 1970’s) where a number of images he thought were of no value turned out to be some of the best within the body and in fact had a dramatic impact on his career going forward. Basically, at the time, he said he did not realize the power an value of the image. In essence, he was shooting the future images of his career.

The following comment was (to paraphrase as I did not record the exact quote) that if you know the image is ‘good’ then you are shooting below your capability. It is not your best work. But instead you best work may be just that image you find no value in today but 5 years down the road see the value of that image. That is shooting, I believe he said, into you future. This is where the dangers of digital photography rear their ugly heads.

Now, I have to admit, I’ve done the following more times than I had really though about until now. With the dawn of professional digital imaging, the editorial power has now shifted from the photo editors back on Madison Ave. to the photographer in the field. Instead of the full body of work being presented to the editorial staff, the photographer can now ‘edit’ his work I the field. Culling out that which he does not feel is of value.

How unfortunate to have decided, perhaps in the fury of a shoot, that any specific image has no value (you id fire off the shutter after all.. there must have been a reason to do that). Just because we may not see the value of the image in the field does not mean it does not have value. Despite the value being lost upon us at the moment, the image may be some of the best work you have done date. And one of those images may even change the way you photograph (as happened with Sam Adell) for the rest of your career/life.

At this point Rob Kendrick chimed in to add another perspective. As a photographer that had made the transition to digital (and had not shot film in over 2 years, other than his tin-type photography, an art in it’s own right) he had some other pitfalls he wanted to bring to light regarding digital photography.

He expressed that one important factor in getting a good shot is the drive to excel. That need to get ‘the shot’ and to keep shooting until you are certain you have it. In the film world this creates a tension that keeps one focused and anxious to keep shooting and perfecting because you do not want to return from you assignment with 12 rolls of film and have not a single frame of what it is you were trying to capture.

When you are shooting digitial, most of that tensions is removed because you can get the instant gratification, that instant feed back right there on the camera itself in the form of the LCD.

Shoot and peek, shoot and peek, shoot and peek. “Did I get what I wanted? Great, I’m done for the day”.

You could never do that with film, you had to keep shooting until you were 100% certain. This often meant the ‘extra images’ you captured could have held something better, something unexpected, some sort of ‘future shot’ that changes the way you photograph forever. But if you are looking at your digital camera’s LCD and you see something like what you wanted, you will likely stop, and those ‘extra images’ will never be shot and you may never capture that special image. Perhaps that is even worse than tossing it out, having never captured it in the first place because you felt you were ‘done’.

As you might image I was taken aback by this short but incredibly important dialog regarding some of the dangers of digital photography. So taken aback after I thought about the way I have been shooting (I almost never edit in the field but I will admit I have done it from time to time but almost always because the image is simply too horrible to be used in any way (grossly out of focus or of something as mundane as a 3” patch of asphalt due to an accidental shutter release).

I thought about how I might slip into the very traps Sam and Rob described if I don’t become cognicent of them. I found that I’m still shooting in a ‘film style’. Lots and lots of frames (I shot over 1100 frames of the Ice Racing event in Everett, WA this past December, that was a personal high for a 3 hour shoot) and then I make multiple editing passes once back in the lab. However, for some reason, and I’ve always done this, I make a full unedited backup of the complete body of work to CDROM or DVD-ROM just in case.

Perhaps somewhere down the line I accidentally picked up this style but I do find that several years down the road I will examine some of my past work and find gems that at the time I thought were real dogs. So now as I shoot fully in the digital realm I need to keep this all in mind.

I’m quite thankful to CSPAN for re-broadcasting that event and lucky that I happened to snap awake at 4:00 am in the morning and catch it on the tube. I just wish that I could find such programming during more normal hours of the day.

It's SNOWING!

Finally. We missed a white Christmas by 2 weeks but laters is better than never. Honestly we were all wondering if we'd see any white stuff this winter at all. Temps have been bouncing around quite a bit this week but the required moister was nowhere to be seen. That is, until tonight.

Of course the kids are both very excited at seeing the snow come down. I am as well. The Mrs. might not be quite to happy to see it this evening. Afterall she's getting preparing herself to get up early and audtion for one of our favorite shows, SURVIVOR. By some strange cosmic imbalance the producers will be auditioning folks here.. in our little county on the western edge of Puget Sound (the largest city here is 30,000 and that's only when the entire fleet is in!).

So it goes, another winter, and finally, some more snow. Too bad it's Friday. I'm sure the kids would have loved a snow day off from school tomorrow. :)

Going Digital - 6 months later.

Happy New Year!

With the dawn of another fiscal year I'm looking back at 2004 and some of the important changes that have happened. Here are some thoughts on some of the things that stand out from 2004.

Going 100% digital
It has been 6 months now since the sell of the 35mm camera equipment to begin investment in the newer EOS lenses and a digital SLR body. Having spent years shooting film I have always kept an eye on the advancements and price reductions involved in ditigal SLR bodies. This year it was finally time to take the plunge.

Over the last two years I had shot only transparency (slide) film in my Canon cameras. After a lot of testing I found the I liked the Kodak high-saturation films meshed with my tasts as well as enhancing the impact of my motorsports photography. One of my largest concerns was potential loss of dynamic range in digital sensors.

I also had to weight the possible extra time spent processing images against the simplicity the purely digital download compared to the time consuming process of loading and scanning slides (even with dedicated transparency scanning hardware from Minolta). In the end.. the plunge was taken when the full set of older CF/DF lenses were sold off on eBay along with my trusty 35mm bodies.

Going digital for me was more than just purchasing a new body, I also had to purchase a completly new set of lenses for the EOS system. Since I was not 100% sure I would like the auto-focus (I was accusomted to Canon's older fully manual lenses) I purchased a couple of the consumer lenses (18-55 & 75-300) to play around with. I think they together they cost me about $300.

It was not long into ownership that I became very impressed with the ease of use and found that it was time to purchase more performance oriented lenses. Previously I had a very nice 300mm primary lense with S.C.C. coatings that produced some very nice photographs as well as being reasonably fast (F:4) for it's size. When taking motorsports photography speed is of importance for sharpness so fast lenses was going to be a must.

To start off I purchased two L series zoom lenses to compliment my consumer glass.

100-400mm F:4.5 L IS
70-200mm F:2.8 L

In the next couple of days I'll be posting my comments on these two lenses.


Launching new photography website
As a professional website developer for the past 10 years, launching a new photography website should have been easy. How surprised I was. This has become a major effort! The website is up and running ( http://www.fotoveloce.com ) but it's far from complete.

One of the challenges, I feel, is that there is no collaborative synergy involved in the project. It's all from my brain, through my fingers, and out onto the web (right now the shopping cart is nearing completion but is not yet ready for prime time). There are a some other navigational issues with the site that I am painfully aware of. They are on the list of tasks to complete however the mount of time I have to dedicate to development of the photography website is limited due to other project commitments and an increasing number of photo assignments and subsequent administrative tasks in support of those assignment (image editing, cataloging, etc. etc.).

Despite all these challenges I'm feeling very good about the overall design and I think the navigation concept is excellent even though not fully implemented within the public areas of the site. As with all good websites, it's in a state of transition, thus I have not peppered the site with those annoying "Under Construction" icons and notices. I really think it goes without saying. :)

Shifting buinses priorities
The last 10 years (5 in business as a pure corp-to-corp outsourcer) have been primarily focused on Business-to-Business (BtoB) sales and marketing of web, database and custome software development and it has kept me pretty busy as well as allowing me to invest in the growth of our new photography business (FotoVeloce). While maintaining commitment to current and future software contracts, it has left a reduced amount of time available to growth of the new business segment. What keeps things rolling around are passion for the art of photography and the wonderful feedback from friends and clients alike. It is truely becoming a possitive force in my life as well a source of great satisfaction for our family.

Marketing challenges
I really had planned to making some comments about the radical change in our marketing plan today, however it's going to have to wait for another article. This entry is already larger than I think most people will want to read in one sitting.

As allways, comments on anything and everything are solicited.