Mark Lyn­der­say

Af­ter be­ing in­clud­ed in a Face­book post on a re­cent New York Times ar­ti­cle (http://nyti.ms/czbUe9) about the up­surge in am­a­teur pho­tog­ra­phers, I be­came en­grossed in the dis­cus­sion. Af­ter get­ting over my sur­prise at pho­tog­ra­phers in the busi­ness for just a few years ex­press­ing wor­ry about the state of the in­dus­try and the at­ti­tude of "new" pho­tog­ra­phers, it seemed ap­pro­pri­ate to of­fer some per­spec­tive.

Fear: New­bie pho­tog­ra­phers with ex­pen­sive equip­ment are de­stroy­ing the pho­tog­ra­phy busi­ness.

Fact: New­bies with ex­pen­sive equip­ment have al­ways been threat­en­ing the pho­tog­ra­phy busi­ness. That as­sault has in­ten­si­fied re­cent­ly with the avail­abil­i­ty of well-pro­grammed, com­put­er dri­ven cam­eras that are of­ten smarter than the peo­ple hold­ing them.

Add to that mix wide­ly pi­rat­ed im­age edit­ing soft­ware and clever plug-ins that ap­ply so­phis­ti­cat­ed ef­fects with­out re­quir­ing much user in­ter­ven­tion or un­der­stand­ing. This sort of mi­gra­tion of ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty in­evitably hap­pens when tech­nolo­gies be­come easy to repli­cate, and their de­vel­op­ers fig­ure out how to sell the pre­vi­ous­ly dif­fi­cult to the ea­ger pub­lic. In the late 1970's "easy home dark­rooms" and "home light­ing kits" were be­ing sold in the mad pro­lif­er­a­tion of pho­tog­ra­phy mag­a­zines that char­ac­terised that era. This, I should point out, was at rough­ly the time that I be­gan tak­ing pho­tog­ra­phy se­ri­ous­ly, so there. Out­come: Push-but­ton pho­tog­ra­phers are on­ly as good as the but­tons that are avail­able to press.

There are many more but­tons avail­able to­day than ever be­fore, but they don't solve every prob­lem and most are tai­lor­made for very spe­cif­ic cir­cum­stances. De­liv­er­ing work of con­sis­tent qual­i­ty in chal­leng­ing cir­cum­stances still re­quires a deep un­der­stand­ing of the prin­ci­ples of pho­tog­ra­phy.

Fear: Pho­tog­ra­phers are close-mind­ed and don't share what they know.

Fact: Pho­tog­ra­phy is, ul­ti­mate­ly, a soli­tary pur­suit. On­ly one eye looks through the viewfind­er, one mind makes the judge­ment about the pho­to­graph­ic vari­ables; one hand guides the mouse in cre­at­ing the fi­nal im­age.

That said, the great­est lever points in my own ca­reer as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er have come out of in­ter­ac­tions with oth­er pho­tog­ra­phers. When I knew ab­solute­ly noth­ing, Gary Chan, who ran a pho­to stu­dio on Tra­garete Road, would an­swer any ques­tion I asked him, as long as I would run around the cor­ner to get him a fresh pack of cig­a­rettes. In the mid-1980's, when I was hav­ing a cri­sis of con­fi­dence in my pho­tog­ra­phy ca­reer, Noel Nor­ton and Harold Pri­eto took time over a few evenings to talk to me in chats that for­ev­er changed the way I viewed the busi­ness of pho­tog­ra­phy in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Gary, Noel and Harold shared their ex­pe­ri­ences freely and they still know more than I ever will about this busi­ness. Ho­n­our­ing their gen­eros­i­ty, I make time for any pho­tog­ra­ph­er who musters the nerve to ask me ques­tions about this busi­ness.

Shar­ing is learn­ing

Out­come: Shar­ing is learn­ing. Pho­tog­ra­phers who don't share and par­tic­i­pate in their pro­fes­sion lost a great op­por­tu­ni­ty to chal­lenge them­selves against keen young minds. The com­modi­tis­ing of any art form does two things. It drags the craft in­to the realm of ab­surd aw­ful­ness, and it teach­es novice prac­ti­tion­ers just how much work is in­volved in the act of cre­at­ing some­thing from noth­ing. Mar­kets are be­ing fun­da­men­tal­ly changed by the pro­lif­er­a­tion of cheap, ac­cept­able pho­tographs but that on­ly push­es the most ded­i­cat­ed im­age mak­ers to be smarter, more dis­tinc­tive and more com­mit­ted to this craft. When every­one is a pho­tog­ra­ph­er, pro­fes­sion­als need to live the mar­ket­ing-speak, de­liv­er­ing strik­ing work con­sis­tent­ly while win­ning cus­tomer con­fi­dence. That still hasn't been pro­grammed in­to any mod­ern dig­i­tal cam­era.

More on this at http://lyn­der­say­dig­i­tal.com/brain/pix.html