Giant Steps

I was looking through some photos I had taken a few weeks ago and I reacquainted myself with this one. It might not be the best composed or sharpest or best lit picture; and to quite honest it might not even be that compelling or dramatic. BUT, I just had to take a picture of this dude. WHY, . .you ask? C’mon dog, he’s out there at the Caribbean day festival shooting with a damn old school TLR camera! YOU KNOW!! He’s got the ground glass waist level view finder. . .C’MON! He’s even got the old school leather pouch and neck strap, and the old school spotmeter.

SO, while I was shooting with my dinosaur first generation digital Rebel, he’s shooting with a darn fossil of a camera. It made me feel good about my camera set up. Not because mine was so much better than his, but because it reminded me that a picture is the product of the photographers mind. Of course it can be ‘influenced’ by your equipment, but at the end of the day, . . if you’re a good photographer you can take dope photos on a camera phone, a Polaroid, lomo, . . WHATEVER.

I’m not even gonna front, . . I was slightly jealous of his gear. I was thinking about all the grainy goodness he was probably capturing, and how the images might have a cool contrasty nostalgic feel with all types of vignetting and stuff. I also thought about myself at his age, . . using the same damn digi-reb and some young whipper snapper thinking it was cool.

I was reminded of the song ‘Giant Steps’ as well. It would seem on its face the technology has take a giant step (if not a leap) over this guys camera, but not necessarily. I mean, while we have made ‘giant steps’ in photography (we have CMOS digital sensors, advanced metering and focusing systems, image stability, etc) cameras are still dumb inanimate objects that require the creativity, ingenuity and emotion of people.

Thinking of the song Giant Steps also made me think of my father too. (the fact that this version is by New York Voices is pretty crazy too, since he used to listen to them and the Manhattan Transfer) My father was the main reasons I got into photography. He used to shoot alot, and develop his film and enlarge and print and all that stuff. He was pretty good.

I kinda find myself wanting to do the same things he used to do like shopping at flea markets for old cameras to fix up and use. I never found out what happened to his old photography equipment after he died but, I think it would’ve been cool to use his old school equipment. I remember once he bought the old Polaroid camera that was so big it came with a damn suitcase! It was crazy, . the camera was mammoth! But he fixed it up and used to shoot stuff with it.

Although he was a certified futurist and early adopted of almost every technology known to man, my father still had not taken the jump over to digital in 2001. Perhaps he knew that the real ‘giant steps’ are made in the mind of the photographer, not their wallet. With that said, perhaps we should all go and make some giant steps of our own. Maybe after shooting a few thousand images, someone could tell me the secret to Flickr’s