TRAVELLING LIGHT
When I first seriously picked up a camera thirty years ago, my dad’s old Konica SLR, it had just one prime lens, no light meter, no auto exposure, no auto focus… no options, except what I chose to photograph.
I learned photography with that camera.
I learned to judge exposure by trial and error, eventually learning to read the light with my eyes. To this day I’m still in the habit of calculating exposure in my head before checking it with my meter. Kodachrome was a good teacher. Unforgiving of error, it rewarded accuracy of exposure and of seeing richly.
For many years, photography was a simple transaction between myself, a very basic camera, and the subject. Then somewhere down the twisting road of professional photography, the transaction got more complicated. Suddenly I had cases full of cameras, lenses, lights, meters, and bits of grip equipment. There were other cases full of stands, softboxes, umbrellas and tripods… it took two people with strong backs just to carry all the stuff.
Did I make better pictures?
My clients certainly approved of the results and they seemed to like the show we made of setting everything up. It all looked very “professional”, or something to that effect.
But did I make better pictures?
Not really.
Don’t get me wrong. I am in no way knocking this way of making images. For many photographers these items are simply the valuable tools or their trade, part of their art, part of who they are as image makers. It’s just not for me.
For awhile now I have been on a journey back to that simple, eloquent transaction between myself, a camera, and the subject.
The big cases are up for sale, but nobody seems to want them.
Everything I work with now will fit easily into a very small shoulder bag that even my three and a half year old daughter can lift.
Do I make better pictures? I hope so.
Certainly I travel lighter these days, and I make pictures that make me much happier, and that definitely sounds better to me.
QG
PS - Yes I still have that old Konica FP. It sits with pride on a shelf in my studio. The gear train seized years ago but the memories created with it live on.
