Photographic Greed

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Greed is one of the seven deadly sins for Christians, and I hope to show you that it is also a photographic sin. It can take several forms, but the word was applied to pictures by one of the photographers who came along to my Sunday photo walks. She used it to mean trying to fit too much into the frame, and this is certainly something that I’ve been guilty of at times. Occasions when there are just so many lovely elements in a scene that one is left trying to decide what to omit, what to edit out. Although the picture is really about the breakwaters and the waves, the sky above has lovely clouds in it and it is very difficult indeed to decide to crop them out.

I’ve written before about the importance of paring the image down to the bare essentials, and my admiration for those photographers who can do this. This process starts with taking the image, and continues in editing as we realise which elements of the image may not be essential, and which may be a positive distraction. Part of the art of making any picture is to give the subject a degree of isolation from its surroundings, even when those very surroundings provide the context in which the subject needs to be seen.

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How to achieve that isolation? One way that I love a lot is to use a wide aperture lens and throw the background out of focus. This is one of the reasons (but only one) why portrait photographers prefer to use a short telephoto for faces, because they offer greater defocussing of the background than lenses with shorter focal lengths. Another is that a more distant camera position means that different parts of the subject’s head are all similar distances from the camera, which gives more natural perspective. A wideangle lens very close to the face may mean that the ears are twice as far from the camera as the nose, giving the model a very large nose indeed.

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Another is to look very carefully at the available angles and distances for shooting the subject, and to choose as plain a background as is possible. There’s no substitute for knowing the territory if you want to shoot in a hurry: in one day, my friend Roy (whose screen-name is kaybee on this site) showed me excellent and unusual vantage points for the Kelpies, the Falkirk Wheel, and the three bridges over the Firth of Forth. I won’t say that a keen shooter couldn’t find all the vantage points we used, but I reckon that it would have taken a couple of days to do so.

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A second form of greed is to want to take all the possible photographs of a subject before leaving it. Sometimes, that’s entirely justified – most Apollo astronauts didn’t get the chance to go back and take another shot of Earthrise! But usually the photographer has the chance to take many more pictures than are necessary: As our mothers taught us when we were learning to feed ourselves, it’s important to know when to desist. It’s important to work the scene (as Gil Grissom always said in CSI), but once we’ve been thorough it’s time to stop (can you hear William Petersen’s American pronunciation? That’s a real mark of an excellent TV series!).

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There’s a subset of this form of greed which comes into play when there’s a popular subject, and only one place to stand… I’ve heard tales of the places where there are rows of photographers seeking the same landscape with their tripods interleaved. At that point, why bother? All of the pictures are going to be substantially the same, and it’s not a matter of finding a different way of seeing… A very similar thing can happen at group shoots and workshops, where, if one person finds an innovative pose or angle, everyone else wants to copy it. As the person running a workshop, I’ve found this both time-consuming and annoying – if it isn’t dealt with quite firmly and rapidly, it can end up with everyone getting two runs at each setup or idea, and a general loss of direction.

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An aside: when you’re starting out with any given genre, it’s obviously a good learning tool to copy someone else. How many art and craft classes at school do you remember where the teacher showed you an example, and you then copied it in every detail to learn the techniques that you could go on to apply to your own ideas? I still have the tray that I made at school, with the oak sides and ends dovetailed together, and just like all the other trays (so much like each other that someone swapped his wood for mine, because my joints were a little better than his…)

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And that leads on to a further form of greed, prevalent with landscape and wildlife photographers, who want to visit every one of the places that have become famous for the images made there. Yosemite National Park in the USA, Ashness Bridge in the Lake District, and Lofoten come to mind. With all such places, it may be an entirely valid desire to go and experience the place – but does one need a camera for that? And even then, in our increasingly climate-challenged world, is that a responsible choice as opposed, for instance, to a week in Scarborough or Tenby?

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Maybe if one is visiting any of these tourist traps, the challenge (should you wish to accept it) is to find a different image, maybe of the people. And I wonder if it would deter the flocking photographers if there were Disney-style signs saying ‘Take your photographs from HERE’? Maybe Greenpeace will start erecting them in the interest of protecting the landscape from erosion…

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A final form of photographic greed is the desire to have every lens or every flash modifier in our possession. More than once I have admitted to being too much of a collector of equipment, But with advancing years, I am slowly learning that most of the time I don’t need very much kit at all. Some people are born collectors, and they find it really difficult to own less than the full range of this or that. This tends to lead to an excessively heavy camera bag, with consequent back problems. What is less obvious is that in the time that it takes to decide on and fit the ideal lens, one could have taken a really good picture with the lens that’s on the camera already.

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To make matters more complicated for the equipment addict, there are sometimes multiple lenses of the same focal length available in the same range: do you really need a massively wide aperture with a 24mm lens? For some people, the answer will be yes, definitely, nothing else will do. But for many of us (including me), a shorter lens allows lower shutter speeds, and differential focus isn’t much needed with wider views, so my Samyang f/2.8, weighing less than 100 grams and reasonably sharp, is a no-brainer for my camera bag. If I had a Sigma f/1.4 Art lens (three times the price, five times the weight), I’d probably leave it at home quite often! Choosing the lens that is good enough is often the sensible choice.

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I know one or two photographers who routinely turn up with one body and one or two lenses, and then proceed to use them with immense talent. They don’t need more. I find that sometimes, it works like this (it certainly did when I first met TrudyUK in a traditional studio – no sets, just various coloured paper backgrounds, one or two props and chairs. We spent the time experimenting with poses and lighting, and if I had not made a deliberate effort to use three other lenses, the 85mm that tends to live on my camera would have worked for everything). But mostly, I find employment for at least half a dozen different lenses over a couple of hours, and often more.

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I suppose that if we take a slightly sideways look at our hobby, there may be a different sort of greedy… I own two cameras that have been described as ‘camera porn’ – they have the same things as other cameras, but there are just more and bigger everything. The term was originally used to describe my Hasselblad C/M 500, which always makes me wish that I had three hands, because the controls are so intricate and different from anything else most people have seen. You can’t release the shutter without a film back attached, and film inserted, and even loading the magazines is far more complex than in other rollfilm cameras… (Not to mention being unable to release the shutter with the darkslide in the magazine, and unable to remove the magazine from the camera WITHOUT the same darkslide in position!)

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The other camera that confounds expectations is my Exakta – it’s left-handed, has two shutter speed dials, and has the shutter release on the front of the camera instead of the top. I’ve written about it at length, and it continues to delight me, so long as I don’t think about the ergonomics. It’s full of interesting solutions to problems that you might not have realised exist…

I have to admit that modern cameras can go to the opposite extreme. Rather than wondering what various knobs and dials are for, you might well enquire where and how you can change this or that which you’re used to having easy access to. Typically, this is because the adjustment can only be effected through the menu… a mark of a serious camera, these days, is that it has more dials and buttons than the entry level models. The cynic might suggest that this is a manifestation of a different kind of greed – the kind where the buyer is offered less than she may want, but at a similar price to the previous model.

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And I have one late addition to the list of greedinesses: wanting clarity, to see it all. In my specialised area, studio work with models, there’s often too much: too much light, when darkness can add mystery (and propriety!); too much revealed, when a more effective picture is all about teasing and concealing. Capturing the right mood depends on giving enough, but not too much information.

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To sum up: it’s worth giving a little bit of thought to your photographic aspirations, and how to achieve them. If you want spectacular landscapes, find a good area, plant yourself for a couple of weeks, and explore on foot, looking for detail, and waiting for the light.

If you hanker after a full set of lenses, think how much they cost, and how much they will weigh, and maybe hire one for a week before deciding to buy it.

And, whatever you shoot, with whichever camera and lens, take pictures with care, making each one count, either in terms of either beauty, or learning.

Then, when you get home and process the pictures, see how finely you can hone them, gently shaving away unnecessary bulk and distractions, so that your subject can shine in an unpolluted sky.

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