In my view there are two types of photographer: gearheads and image makers. Gearheads concentrate on their equipment; how many megapixels, how many frames per second, the quality of the lens. The logic is that the money spent on equipment will be reflected in the resulting pictures. There is some truth in that, but not as much as some people would like. If you are a sports photographer then having fast autofocus and eight frames per second will no doubt help you grab that perfect moment. But if you don’t know much about composition it could just as easily leave you with eight photos that are pretty poor.
So that leaves the second type of photographer: the image maker. This is the type of person who isn’t too fussed about megapixels and exotic lenses but does know how to frame a good image, the sort of image that people enjoy looking at.
As a sweeping generalisation gearheads tend to be men whilst women tend to ignore the gear and concentrate on the image. I think the best photographers manage to have a mix of both skills.
As a man and an engineer I have found myself all too often in the gearhead camp; I know more than it is healthy to know about cameras and specifications. So I want to use this blog as a vehicle to improve my image making. However, I also think I’ll chat about specifications as well, after all I have rather a lot to say on that subject.
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I am definately the second type although am finding more and more that I need to be more of a gearhead – my lack of technical knowledge leads to me not always getting what I want. Especially when you are low on time to get ‘the’ image. Great idea for a blog – keep me posted!
Laura x
Taking photography classes has helped me know more about the technical side, and thus have found my photography improving. However, I’m a bit of a snob when it comes to over photoshopping and want to be able to get a good RAW photo without having to tweak it a huge lot. 😀
There’s an interesting article on LifeHacker (with a link to a quite amusing video) of how to take really good photos with relatively poor equipment (an iPhone camera in this case): http://lifehacker.com/5581273/you-can-get-great-images-from-a-very-cheap-camera
Dude, this can’t even shoot RAW!
Hmmm, except he’s using a pro model, pro makeup, pro studio gear and pro retouching! I think that’s a lot of cheats in one go 🙂