“People make way too much out of the digital versus film. The challenges in photography—focus, crop, shutter, aperture, and of course the biggest ones of all, the ones that really matter: what you actually point the camera at, and with what intelligence you use it…are all still there, completely unchanged.”
This is a quote concerning the digital versus film debate and I agree with Graham completely. But I want to take it a step outside of the box in the more general direction of what we’re making out of photography regardless of the medium and why I don’t point my camera at everything…anymore.
I used to be [sigh] Girl With Camera. I had a newly adopted Nikon Baby and she was needy and hungry. I was in love. I was obsessed. We did everything together. But eventually came the feeling I was missing something. Like, maybe the actual event I was attending. When Nikon baby wasn’t slung across my shoulder to grab timely shots of bathroom stalls on a random moment of relief people asked me, “Where is your camera?”
They didn’t ask me how my day was. They didn’t even notice my new shoes. But I guarantee if I had showed up wearing a new lens we would have talked of nothing else.
And I thought, crap. “Because somewhere along the way I was too busy snapping around to notice just how much of my identity had gotten sucked into a piece of machinery.
I cut the cord, so to speak, and gave the machine some space. Somewhere in that space I found balance. I am a professional full-time photographer but when it comes to personal art I don’t pick up the camera until I have some intelligence with which to use it with.
When I was Girl With Camera I ran down the street slinging pictures and obnoxiously whooping with digital joy and scanning for reflective surfaces to grab a self portrait. I probably got in the way of people who came to actually see a show or hear a speaker. In trying to “bring that moment home” so I could flickr, tweet, blog and otherwise spread that sucker as far across the internets as possible I compromised another’s experience. Mostly my own. And I’m not sure what the payoff was. Worth it?
Now I seek to interpret the moments around me with my art in a more thoughtful way. Now I have an opinion about the difference between art and a snapshot and I’m rather captivated when someone can do this so perfectly and with such consistency. There is still a better balance to be had but in the meantime, I confess,I feel far more content taking my camera to work and taking myself to play.
-Carissa Byers
carissabyers.com
photopol.us guest blogger
www.photopolus.etsy.com
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