'How to take good photos for under $1000'

For me it's not so much about the message he's giving, but the manner in which he's giving it. His manner is doing him no favours and leaves me with an unflatering opinion about the gentleman, that maybe undeserved, but it is how he comes across to me.

Ah well, I guess not everyone is going to get it.

To somewhat broaden the discussion I do think it's more difficult for newcomers to photography

The point here is that the masses aren't newcomers to photography in the way that enthusiast photographers expect them to be. They really don't care about photography in the same way that enthusiasts do.

Many years ago I used to know a man in his 50s who, after a lifetime of working as a labourer in construction sites, he decided he really wanted to do something different with the rest of his life. He had an immense love for jazz and he played the saxophone very well. So he decided to study music at college to improve his skill on the sax and then after that he went to university of complete a bachelors degree in education. His dream was to be a music teacher at a school and spend the rest of his years instilling his love for jazz to upcoming generations.

I lost touch with him for about 15 years.

When I finally got back in contact with him, he was a broken man. He managed to complete his bachelors in education/teaching and he landed his dream job as a music teacher at a high school. But the kids fought and ridiculed him every step of the way, they refused to accept jazz as the complex and infinitely fascinating art that it deserved to be, and instead only cared about rap and dance music or whoever is the latest artificially manufactured boy band in the Top 50 charts. I remember our phone conversation, he was a broken man.

I'm not a teacher and I'm not an expert in education but if I was a music teacher in school, I suppose I would have zeroed in on rap and dance music at first instance. For example, challenge the kids in an engaging discussion about the history of rap, the social struggles, the gang-related associations and why rap music became connected with this aspect of urban life in NY and California, challenge them to explain the technicality of rap music itself, what equipment are being used, what sounds, why, where do you draw the line between the good stuff and the cheesy attempts. For the smartasses in class, I'd challenge them to do better than some of the cheesier garbage that is out there.

Stu's blog post is about reaching out and connecting with the kids at first instance about what they want to know 'now' without jumping headfirst and blind into the finer aspects of photography as an art form that it deserves to be. I have made the mistake of not making that connection first and when I've launched into a schpiel about apertures, sensor sizes, shutter speeds, ISOs, the latest amazing mirrorless cameras..... sometimes I have had the self-awareness to stop myself when I start to notice their eyes glaze over with extreme boredom.
 
Thats what my Minolta SRT303b came with in 1973, and I loved it: well it wasnt what you'd call a nifty 50, it was a darned good 50... Learned a lot, too, about depth of field and other groovy things.

Same here! I don't know which Minolta I had, but it was manual everything and I got it used in the mid '80s. It came with a 50mm and I had to save up for a year to get it a used zoom. I learned a lot that year. I even bought it a reversing ring! I don't know where RT Panther's from, but in the 70's in the US, "nifty" was a term of approbation. I guess it got replaced with "cool," because I only hear it with "nifty fifty" any more. What did it mean in Australia?
 
Alright you know what, maybe it's about shallow depth of field and a whole bunch of Asians taking photos of their food and then posting it on facebook:

Pictures of Asians Taking Pictures of Food
It's an international problem. My niece spent a semester at sea earlier this year as an undergraduate in college. I'm making the numbers up, but let's say she posted let's say 70 photos from Japan, her second port. (they did the "book learning" on the cruises between ports and then did structured sightseeing as part of the coursework.) The first 40 were pictures of food, of her and/or her friends eating food, and of menus neither she nor I could read, along with a few of her and her friends shopping. I almost gave up scrolling through the album and would have missed the Shinto shrine and some other things I considered much more interesting than food.
I'm glad to say, about four stops later when she made it to Africa, the balance of her photographic choices had swung quite far away from food photos. Travel really does broaden one.
But, the main goal of the (retired) woman I'm mentoring in the struggling camera club we're trying to form in Henry is to take better travel photos. Including, better photos of the meals she's about to eat when she travels.
I don't get it. I don't say anything to her. I say to myself, OK, it's a subject, how can she get better results with this point and shoot? But I just don't get it.
 
I learned with an ME Super; I learned how to mix a balance of light, time, glass and silver halide. I learned the intimate relationship between aperture, shutter speed and material sensitivity. I learned more about optical physics in five weeks than I did in five years wasted in school. It took a lot longer to learn the other fundamentals of photography, of course - those I am still learning to this day - composition, patience and finding my own "voice". My first serious camera was that Pentax - it taught me well.

Sent from another Galaxy
 
I read the article again. The way he writes just irritates me, but let's be fair:
1. I'm fine with the DSLR and the fast 50. That would be a good camera to learn with, assuming they can live with the limitations of that FL. I learned on that combo, although the 50 is more tele with APS-C.
2. I'm also fine with shooting wide open. Let them experiment with the shallow DoF since it's probably new to them, and they'll work out when to stop down after control of DoF has becomes a desirable ability.
3. I just can't take the LR suggestion seriously. LR is a deeply unfriendly piece of software and if technical details puts "the masses" to sleep, then LR will actually kill a few of them. Using RAW is huge advance for many aspects of image generation, e.g., NR, and I understand that he is trying to simplify the shooting experience, but LR will not work for most folks unless they have someone there to show them how to use it or take an online course.

It was probably the LR suggestion that really put me off the article. I've tried to show folks the basics of PS or PS Elements and it's a real struggle.
 
Just to expand on my earlier post a little ...

He really writes horrible, unattractive, ugly, journalese-y prose.
in fact, to call it "prose" is to embiggen it without justification.
accordingly, I skimmed it and therefore may have misunderstood the main thrusts of his argument (such as they are)

So, caveats in place, I can rant on in peace ...

The gist does seem to be that "the kids" (or is it "the masses"? - if we can tolerate nasty old-fashioned slightly Stalinist terminology like that, so beloved of demagogues and dictators) need to be educated to do proper photography and that all they really need is exposure to a proper camera and they'll see the error of their ways and start taking proper photographs rather than these crazy cameraphones that produce such crappy images (nearly as bad as those awful kit lenses that you are supposed to throw away ...)

the thing that comes to mind most strongly reading this sh!t is similar sh!t that gets trotted out by some members of the digital-hating film fraternity: "Oh what you just need to do is show the kids some Velvia on a lightbox and they'll soon abandon their crappy digital cameras, get their hair cut and have a shave and get a proper job in a bank".

[No they won't, they'll just look for an Instagram filter that makes their snaps look like Velvia]


The ship has long sailed on the film-digital "battle", (can a ship sail on a battle? anyway, you know what I mean) ... and I can't help but think that anyone (and this guy is far from being the only one) who is currently trying to argue for and preserve the primacy of the dSLR and of "serious amateur photography" is bobbing along in the wake of that ship on a long tow.

Look how fast imaging has changed in the last three years (let alone 5 or 10); cameras are unrecognizable in their sophistication, and many camera 'phones will outperform my dear old E-P2. The technology churn is almost beyond comprehension!

But just aside from the technology, look how fast things are changing in terms of how images are displayed, shared. Not just "the internet" (and that's a phrase only for people like me who remember when there wasn't an internet) but tablets and phones and hdtvs and whatnot.

The interesting questions aren't to do with the recognisable and familiar existing cameras and serious-hobbyists ... they are to do with what's happening now to the way people see (itself embedded in a lot of bigger social constructs as well)

Since the advent of digital cameras, "photography" has changed almost beyond recognition. If anything that is even recognisable as what we now think of as photography exists in 10 or 20 years time, I'll be amazed.

And by then, what "Stu" thinks photographers should be doing in 2014 will be remembered like the stain on a toilet bowl ...
 
So ..... any of you wiseguys wanna chip in and help out a fellow forum member in this thread. It'd be good to read from the start but the relevant discussion begins from about p.3 or post #22 onwards.

The facts and circumstances are slightly different to Stu's scenario but the demographic and more importantly the principle behind Stu's post remains the same.
 
Just read the linked article, and skimmed thru the posts here... lordy! :eek: :drama:

I think I disagree with much of Stu's advice, but I think that doesn't matter.

I do agree with "spray & pray". Why? Because you should be changing camera parameters and compositions while you spray. Then when you go home to review the images, find out which ones most appeal to you, and consider why. I think that's a fine way to learn.

:)
 
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