Last Updated on 03/09/2020 by Mark Beckenbach
Your camera takes great pictures: and your hands take the trash out very well.
Every photographer and every person has heard this before. Perhaps it’s changed these days to “Your phone shoots better photos than mine does,” but the truth is that it’s a 50/50 split. I’m not at all saying gear doesn’t matter. It does. But your phone or your camera is simply an extension of yourself in the same way that yarn and needles are an extension of your friend’s ability to knit a nice scarf. Now, this statement is something most commonly said by folks who just don’t think of photography as anything more important than taking photos. It’s never said with bad intent, but out of purely not knowing any better.
So, why is your camera important? The gear you use has an important purpose. Cameras are designed to photograph what’s in front of you. Most people just push a button or hold it down to take a ton of images. They’re mostly passive in the background just letting the camera do something, and this is ultimately where the statement comes from. Your camera does indeed have these basic goals. But let’s talk about phones for a moment. Phones, without a doubt, have the single biggest problem. Everyone gets fingerprints on their phones and that causes the image quality to look worse and worse. If there are streaks in the lights, then you have a dirty lens. Cleaning said lens will easily make people go back to saying, “Your phone takes such great pictures.” But if you didn’t clean the lens, to begin with, then it’s not going to give you better image quality from a technical standpoint. With this said, the camera or phone is able to do only so much, but it needs someone behind it to make it better.
Now, here’s a situation where the statement makes no sense. In fact, no one has ever said it to me after I made this image. Why do you think that is? It’s because it’s an original idea. It didn’t just happen; it was orchestrated. And that’s much different than anything else that capturing does. Note my keyword here: capturing. There is a fundamental difference between capturing and creating.
“Now why does any of this matter? Because it helps you to define the type of work you’re doing. What you’re doing can be more creative if you’re manipulating a scene because you’re inputting your ideas into it. But on the other hand, your creativity could be with your foresight and the ability for your to predict what will happen–which is a skill that needs to be exercised and requires a deep understanding of what subject matter you’re shooting.”
On Photographers Capturing vs Creating Images
That quote is from an article I wrote years ago. It’s about the very idea of capturing vs. creating. Once photographers really get it into their heads they’ll understand why they’re both so very important. But, it’s up to us to educate everyone else too so that the world genuinely understands the value of creative photographers and specialized documenters.