Pic a’Day: 2 July 2010
Window Seat or “Does The Camera Really Matter?”
Window Seat
I was on a flight back from Johannesburg after a day of meetings, glad to be heading home. Cramped into a ridiculously small space, as usual on these kinds of routes, I was staring out the window looking forward to getting out of this flying tin of sardines. I observed an interesting cloud formation starting to develop. Seemingly some kind of (cold?) front wedging itself into the overcast. So far I was only observing, until that time when the picture really started to get remarkably appealing.
Funnily enough I was thinking to myself, “where’s the camera when you need it?”. Funny, because I did have a camera with me, I always do. Just had to peel myself out of the seat and dig it out of the bag in the overhead locker. I had a Canon S2IS as my take-everywhere camera at this time – very enjoyable camera due to the zoom and tilt-swivel screen, but also very bad in terms of sensor and software. A noisy, purple fringing, struggling to focus, little bugger. Anyway, you have to make do with what you have, right? Right! So, I started shooting away, killing time, nothing else to do, why not? It won’t be worth much, but at least the scene is on (some kinda) record. I never looked at the image again or bothered developing it.
Later that year, Black & White Magazine started calling for entries for their annual Single Image Contest. As so often I went on a spree, developing this, rendering the other, getting everything organised and ready for submission. Dunes, shipwrecks, cityscapes, people, you name it, what a mission. Somehow I came across this neglected cloud picture and got stuck looking at it. I converted it to B&W and kept on staring at that noisy picture of a cloud (in the wedge) reminding me of Starship Enterprise. I was fascinated and all of a sudden remembered what grabbed me about that scene in the first place – does that ever happen to you? That you only realise what made you take the picture at a later stage when you revisit the image? In a spur of a moment I decided, what the heck, let’s throw it into the mix and see what happens.
Cuban Dancer
Well, would you know it, the image was actually published and awarded a Merit Award. Not the dunes, not the shipwrecks, portraits, ants or any of the other images taken with expensive equipment, schlepped half way around the globe, and developed during oodles of hours and days, with the aid of tons of software, filters and what-have-you’s.
The point it made and proved to me, yet again, creativity and availability (of a camera) go hand in hand. What about that the great scene or moment and your Canon 1Ds Mark XII if you don’t have the bugger at reach? The picture of the Cuban Dancer is a similar story, taken with a 3MP Canon Ixus, set on automatic mode and supported by an ashtray.
Cameras don’t make pictures, photographers do.
So long
Tommy
Category: Photography
