Posts tagged ‘photography rant’
My Quest of Upgrading My Photography Equipments
As a photography enthusiast…I frequently had a discussion with my fellow photography enthusiast in the office. In one of the discussion we were discussing about a full frame camera against DX format (this is a Nikon term of the non full frame DSLR cameras). He said that if you are into landscape photography, you need to have a full frame camera as it will capture a bigger view than a DX format body. Well I think I’ve learned something today…. Obviously I am not §that good in photography that I didn’t know this basic knowledge.
Well what are the difference between full frame camera and the DX format?
Travel and Photography
It is apparent that photography and travel blend together like hot apple pie and ice cream. When you travel, you want to take pictures for whatever reason. Some take pictures to help capture the memory they had during their trip, about places they went to and to prove they have been to those places. Others take pictures because of the stunning view they saw with their own eyes and want to capture because it was so impressive at that time. I take my camera with me when traveling for so many different reasons and the subjects continue to change. As an architect who likes traveling, I take my camera with me not only to take pictures of me (in a new place) but also to get the vista, so back home I can use that for my architecture lectures maybe sometime in the future, or for my book that I am obsessed to write, or lots of other possibilities. I take lots of pictures but never really taken any photography classes. Instead, learning from my mistakes, I am getting more serious on taking pictures by buying more sophisticated cameras instead of just a pocket digital camera; hoping the result would get better by investing on a bigger mega pixel camera from a DSLR camera. The result, hmmm, some are OK (but not great), but most of them are not so good…. I realized then that I need to master my DSLR before I take more pictures! I have just got my second DSLR but already have thousands of images stored in my computer that I don’t know what to do with it. Some are good (maybe), most of them were still unacceptable – at least to my standard. I realize that I need to learn photography better to understand the concept of taking good pictures, not just a snap happy picture with my DSLR… as it was not cheap and really a big investment for just an hobbyist like me. I joined a photography club and started reading a lot on photography, as well as looking other’s picture, to understand more on colour, lighting, composition and all other photography principlas. The more I learned the more I realized that I knew nothing about photography at all, thus I made this conclusion:
As for me, now I realize that even though I already invested so much in my camera, I still don’t know where I am in those 3 categories. I knew that I could never be in the Amateur Photographer category, but I am already one step further than the ‘snap happy’ photographer, as I invested a lot in my camera equipment. Thus I decided to keep my day job, and try to master my camera better, with no ambition to become a serious photographer…. You can see the results of my camera at work in my photoblog or my flickr.
Berwisata dan Fotografi
Berwisata dan fotografi hampir tidak dapat dipisahkan, seperti layaknya kopi dengan susu…. Fotografi adalah pelengkap pada saat kita berwisata, membantu kita merekam gambar yang kita lihat pada saat berwisata, apapun alasannya. Ada yang karena ingin merekam perjalanan tersebut sebagai bukti pada saat kita pulang bahwa kita pernah berkunjung ketempat itu. Ada juga yang merekam gambar tersebut karena pemandangannya yang begitu mempesona, sehingga mereka ingin menyimpannya untuk kemudian hari.
Saya selalu membawa kamera saya kemana pun saya traveling dengan berbagai alasan yang berubah-ubah dari waktu ke waktu. Sebagai arsitek dengan hobby traveling, kamera yang saya bawa bukan hanya untuk mengambil foto diri dengan background menara eiffel sebagai bukti bahwa saya ke Paris, tapi juga untuk merekam vista yang saya liat dengan mata telanjang saya, dengah harapan bahwa itu bisa menjadi bahan kuliah arsitektur yang mungkin saya berikan, atau mungkin sebagai bahan tulisan dari buku saya yang selalu ingin saya tulis, atau masih banyak lagi alasan lain.
Saya mengambil banyak sekali foto dari satu perjalanan saja, sayangnya saya tidak pernah belajar fotografi. Bukannya belajar dari kesalahan yang saya lakukan dari ribuan foto yang saya abil, saya malah membeli kamera yang lebih canggih lagi; dengan harapan bahwa hasilnya akan lebih baik dengan investasi pada kamera dengan mega pixel yang lebih besar dan dari pocket digital camera ke digital SLR (DSLR). Hasilnya, hmmm…. sebagian lumayan …. tapi sebagian besar ancur!!! OK, artinya saya harus menguasai menggunakan kamera DSLR saya lebih baik sebelum menjepretnya untuk menghasilkan gambar yang lebih baik…
Sekarang saya baru saja memberi kamera DSLR saya yang kedua. Saya juga memiliki ribuan foto yang tersimpan di komputer saya, dan saya tidak tau bagaimana mengaturnya didalam komputer saya. Diantaranya (mungkin) cukup bagus, tapi kebanyakan dibawah standar…. Dengan kamera baru ditangan, saya sadar bahwa saya tidak bisa belajar dari trial dan error, tapi harus belajar dan mengerti lebih banyak tentang konsep mengambil gambar yang baik, tidak asal jepret dengan kamera yang tidak murah untuk orang yang memotret sebagai hobby seperti saya.
Saya lalu bergabung dengan club fotografi setempat, dan mulai membaca buku-buku tentang fotografi, sambil melihat-lihat hasil karya orang-orang di flickr itu, dan berusaha mengerti tentang warna, pencahayaan, komposisi, dan segala macam teori fotografi. Hasilnya, semakin saya belajar, semakin saya sadar bahwa saya tak tau apa-apa tentang fotografi, dan saya pun berkesimpulan:
- Fotografi adalah seni, bukan matematika, tak ada yang bisa dibilang benar atau salah didalamnya atau hasil yang tajam dan fokus atau “burem dot com”, itu semua tetap bisa dibilang karya seni fotografi, tergantung bagaimana kita melihatnya….
- Saya mengkategorikan orang-orang dengan kameranya dalam tiga kategori:
- Fotografer professional - adalah orang-orang yang memperoleh penghasilan dari karya fotografi mereka; memberikan persiapan dan pemikiran yang lebih dalam terhadap setiap jepretan yang diambil. Kameranya pun tidak tanggung-tanggung harganya super mahal dan cara mengoperasikannya pun super rumit.
- Fotografer amatir – mereka yang senang akan fotografi, tapi tidak mengambil keuntungan dari hobbynya ini. Mereka mengambil banyak gambar, melakukan banyak eksperimen demi untuk sebuah kesenangan; hasilnya tidak kalah dengan para profesional itu. Investasi untuk kameranyapun cukup serius.
- yang terakhir adalah fotografer narsist - mereka yang memotret terutama dirinya sendiri sebagai obyek utama, melulu karena memori yang diambil dari hasil jepretannya, tidak begitu perduli hasilnya punya nilai artistik atau tidak, “pokoknya gue ada disitu….” Alatnya pun tidak macam-macam, cukup pocket digital camera saja, atau malah telepon genggam yang dilengkapi dengan kamera juga sudah cukup.
- Untuk menghasilkan gambar yang bagus, (apapun arti “bagus” disini), apapun kameranya, yang penting adalah bagaimana kita melihat pemandangan itu, merekamnya dan kemampuan kita menguasai kamera yang kita miliki. Bukan kecanggihan kameranya dan segala macam tetek bengek yang lain.
Sementara itu saya jadi mikir, saya masuk kategori yang mana? Investasi yang saya lakukan untuk perlengkapan yang satu ini sudah lebih dari kategori “fotografer narsist”, tapi kayaknya untuk mendekati kategori “fotografer amatir” kok hasilnya kayaknya masih sangat jauh dari impian. Jadi saya memutuskan untuk tetap mempertahankan “day job” saya, dan berusaha untuk menguasai kamera saya yang baru, tanpa punya ambisi untuk jadi fotografer amatir yang serius, hasilnya bisa diliat di photoblog saya yang terus saya tambah koleksinya atau pada flickr saya. Yang penting disinikan cerita dari travelingnya, foto-fotonya itu adalah bonus…!
Street Photography
I am now into photography; as an architect, I was trained to capture the space, the feeling, the atmosphere of places. The idea is, when we start designing, we try and create a certain type of ambiance. Taking photographs is a way to record, to document, to analyze or to imitate and maybe use it later on for all sort of purposes.
But it is easier to say than to put it in practice. The result is sometime good, but most of the time bad. I try to get more interested in photography, buying more sophisticated equipment, taking part in photography workshops…. The result is just the same; my photography is never in these categories:
- Portraiture, as I don’t really like to take studio pictures, and I know I have no intention to open up my own photographic studio… I like my objects to be candid.
- Landscape, maybe I am in this category, as I find landscape picture easier to handle, and to me landscape pictures always look beautiful especially during sunset. But to see my results … hmm I think I need to learn more, on apertures, focal length, colour, compositions, and a lot more.
- Night photography, this is also interesting to me, but then again I am in the category of learning about photography, so too early for any success in this category.
- Macro/close- up, could be interesting, but I don’t think this is me, I don’t have the patience to do the experiments and everything else.
- Architecture photography, this is where I want to belong, but as yet I don’t have the sensitivity for all the composition and reading so many rules of photography, so that the buildings will look like what the architect wanted. But I believe that once the building is there, people start using it, nobody would understand or want to remember what the architects tried to achieved with the building anyway… it’s all the gimmick and sales talk of the architect.
- Along with the above theories, I like cityscape photography, which shows skylines of a city, or aerial views of a city; but to do this, I need to distance myself from the city, or go up very high which happens very rarely.
- Recently I stumbled upon the word of Street Photography, this is interesting, then I look up in Wikipedia which says:
Street photography is a type of documentary photography that features subjects in candid situations within public places such as streets, parks, beaches, malls, political conventions, and other settings.
I think this is me….
So what is the art of street photography? I did a small research on the internet, and this is what I found interesting: Street Photography is considered as “an introduction to Photography for a non Photographer”…. This is good, I think that’s me, even though I have held a camera since I was a young little girl, but up to know, I am still in the “introduction chapter”.
The rule of street photography:
- It’s a no-rules photography, no rule of third for composition, no f stops, no shutter speed to think of; … the art of this? It is in the eye of the beholder, where as art speaks to those who prepare to listen.
- It’s shooting from the hip. Yes, you don’t have to look at the view finder or the LCD to see your object behind the lens.
- The object of the photograph could be everything of the daily activity, from a reflection in a rain puddle, a colour in a crowd, a texture of a façade or anything….
- It is instant and point to shoot, the idea is to capture the moment as candid as possible before the birdy fly away to another country.
- The result can be:
- Out of focus, tilted horizon, or the least is ‘soft focus’
- Odd things in the center ground, no center focus, odd crops
- Very busy, tilted perspective, upside down
Next question is what is equipment for street photography? It’s very simple:
- The best one of course is the pocket automatic camera, better still, nowadays, you can use your mobile phone, as a lot of mobile phone are equipped with a good mega pixel capability.
- You don’t even need to use a tripod or fancy camera lense or filters, you can leave them at home.
- If you use DSLR camera, it’s better off if you are also equipped with a zoom lens, as with this you are still able to shoot candid pictures without being offensive to the subject.
Well I think I like the term of street photography and thus I will start uploading my blur dot com version of my photographs so far, which you can see in this photoblog.
A good article in pdf file for additional info about street photography is here.
