The other day, I was listening to On Taking Pictures, which was my favorite podcast that recently returned. And on this show, photographer Bill Wadman talked about how photographers at the Eddie Adams workshop shoot portraits at around 20 frames a second or so these days. Fascinating; for most of photography history photographers were able to just see and understand moments to get the images they wanted or needed with only a single frame. Furthermore, photographers made the most of this single frame. I encourage photographers to overall, just get the shot. But to also find solace in rewiring your brain to only shoot one frame a second and become more in tune with what’s happening.
No photographer likes the culling process. Part of this is because it’s a laborious thing that newer photographers are tending to give to AI. But truly, it’s not all that bad of a process if you simply shoot one frame a second.
In college and school, you’re taught to hate your own work because of what your professor says. But you’re also surrounded by peers that help and encourage you. Eventually, you learn to use the hatred of your own work to refine it and make it better. At the same time, you’re also taught to believe and have faith in yourself to be able to achieve better results. After some time, you know when you’re producing good work and when you’re producing terrible work. For most of my 20s, I went through periods where I felt I was producing terrible photos. But as I look back now, I see that I honestly did some very good stuff.
Without that process, I couldn’t produce the good work that I’m capable of doing. And after a while, you learn that less is more. With that said, what’s the point of having 20 frames if most of them are bad? Why not just focus on making that one good frame to begin with? With this mindset, getting one frame a second and shooting in this way was always the most rewarding.
Sure, there are situations where it makes lots of logical sense to get the shot and to use a faster drive mode. But where does the human element come in vs. the technological element? If you’re telling the camera to shoot something like 20 frames a second for a portrait, you’re more or less just relying on the technology. But if you’re intentionally working to shoot a single frame, then you’re putting far more effort and human elements into making that frame the best it can be.
In a world where photographers are starting to compete with AI in an ethics war, doesn’t it make more sense for photographers to rely on technology a whole lot less? In some ways, this sounds ironic coming from a website that tests camera gear. But we’ve never said that we need to rely on it fully to get the results that we do. And often, we produce our own shoots, direct our own models, use in-camera techniques to achieve compelling photos, etc.
The idea of shooting one frame a second comes more much to the front when we also consider that photography is something that truly needs to be done more within the camera to adapt and survive. We need to rely on post-production less and less; as then all the skills of photography won’t be photography, but photo editing. Photo editing surely is a part of the process, but it shouldn’t be the biggest part of it.