What is most important in photography?
This photo marks the point where I fell in love with photography. It was in 2010 during a stage rehearsal for the Young Choreographer’s evening in Karlsruhe, the ballet was Reginaldo Oliveira’s first choreography with the title: “Attempt”.
I took it with a Nikon D5000 and some crappy 3rd party lens. It’s a bit blurry. There’s a lot of noise in the image. And honestly, I don’t care. The image projects a feeling. That is all that matters in photography. An image only fails if it says nothing. Who cares what camera you used?
Diego de Paula, Bruna Andrade and Bram Koch
This photo marks the point where I fell in love with photography. It was in 2010 during a stage rehearsal for the Young Choreographer’s evening in Karlsruhe, the ballet was Reginaldo Oliveira’s first choreography with the title: “Attempt”.
I took it with a Nikon D5000 and some crappy 3rd party lens. It’s a bit blurry. There’s a lot of noise in the image. But the image projects a feeling. An image only fails if it says nothing. Who cares what camera you used? Do you care what pots and pans a chef used to make you that delicious dinner? I highly doubt that even the best pixel peepers (someone who zooms in so far they can make out the atoms holding a photo together) could tell you which camera was used to create an image. So many times people have asked me what camera I use. As if it really matters. There is no magic camera. Of course, I always strive to for the highest technical quality in my images, using the best gear available to me, but the emotion the image provokes and/or the story it tells, is by far more important to me.
Why do so many people add filters or film grain to their images? Because without them the images look too perfect. The imperfection is what makes an image interesting. Perfect is boring. Life is far from perfect. Life is interesting. So many people get plastic surgery and Botox. They all end up looking the same.
Many people want overly-photoshopped images. One day they'll look back and think: “what did I really look like back then?”. That is, if they ever look at the images again. Usually the photos just end up disappearing on their computer or phone’s hard drive after their 0,000058 seconds of fame on social media.
Whenever a new camera or lens is announced, photographers increase their mortgages and start selling their kidneys to be the first to buy it. In today’s culture people think that buying the latest and the greatest is the solution to all their problems. Today’s cameras are a 1000 times more advanced than 10 years ago, they can do everything and more than what you’ll ever need as a photographer. People took amazing photos 90 years ago. What cameras did they use?
Understanding the technicalities of photography will surely give you more control over your images. A better camera can surely help you achieve the image you are after. But don’t listen to someone who says that real photographers only take photos with “real cameras” set to Manual mode. Did you take a photo of your cat with your Cheap Chinese Mobile Phone, that is “badly lit”, but you just love it? Then print it out and frame it. You’re a photographer.
The Land of Kimchi and Selfie Sticks
This was my last company tour as a dancer. I’ll surely miss doing these tours together with my wife, who said that she was not just jet-lagged this time, but also “food-lagged”. I love kimchi, bibimbap and Korean barbecue, but in the end nothing beats cooking at home.
This was my last company tour as a dancer. I’ll surely miss doing these tours together with my wife, who said that she was not just jet-lagged this time, but also “food-lagged”. I love kimchi, bibimbap and Korean barbecue, but in the end nothing beats cooking at home.
After our two performances of Carmina Burana in Daegu, my wife and I used our two free days to see a bit more of South Korea. We travelled to the nearby city of Gyeongju, which used to be the capital of the ancient kingdom of Silla. Here we stayed at a lovely little traditional Hanok guesthouse. Nearly all of the Koreans we encountered were polite, hospitable and would go out of their way to help us with any query we had.
We visited the temple of Bulguksa and the Tombs of the rulers of Silla, which look like giant mounds, followed by the Gyeongju National Museum. The next day we headed to Seoul on the super-fast KTX train, where we hiked along the Seoul City Wall, followed by a stroll through the beautiful Bukchon Hanok Village.
South Korea is truly a technologically advanced country, with more selfie-sticks and tripods per capita than I have seen to date. Locals hire Hanboks (traditional Korean dresses) and have their photos taken in every direction. A tripod is the last thing that I would want to be lugging around with me.
I have always tried to travel as light as possible, this time with only one camera, one lens and a few batteries. Recently I acquired the Fujifilm Fujinon 16mm f1.4 R WR lens and wanted to use it to force myself to think “wider”. I find it much easier using a longer lens, as it creates more separation and isolates your subject more. So the wider angle of view demands of me to think more about composition and placement of my subject. I can also isolate my subject by getting really close and making it appear much larger than more distant objects. (Not very flattering for portraits)
This lens is on the wide end with an equivalent field of view of 24mm on a 35mm SLR. Although it is much bigger than the little 18mm lens I have, the picture quality is outstanding (it will literally make any pixel-peeper drool) and it can also focus as close as 15cm. I loved the experience of using this lens, and it turned out to be great for shoot-from-the-hip street photography.
Disclaimer: Neither Fujifilm, South- or North Korea paid me to write any of this.
