Are You A Slave To Your Equipment?

I've been thinking about that question since the beginning of the weekend.
It's been stuck inside my empty ol' noggin bouncing 'round like that old Atari game 'PONG'.
I heard this question Friday night as I was bored and sitting at home with the missus. I was looking through our assortment of DVD's to find a movie to pass the time, when I came across a DVD of PINK FLOYD - Live At Pompeii.

Now , I've always liked good music of any kind, and i've always been partial to classic rock, so I thought 'Why not'?
From the very beginning of the DVD, these guys didn't hold anything back. And they know how to get the sounds they wanted using the equipment available. You just have to listen to their music to hear how tight and creative they were.
But if you really want to know how far 'out there' they can get, find a copy of this DVD and watch it for yourself.

It's not all music. There are some segments that are broken up into interviews, recording sessions, and various behind the scene footage.
During one short clip, the interviewer ask David Gilmour what creative forces he used to come up with the sound and music that he was looking for.

Gilmour smiled and said 'You can't be a slave to your equipment'.

WOW!!! - It hit me!
I'm a slave to my equipment.

Or maybe not my equipment, but my thought process.

You see......I shoot everything on manual. I rarely use any automatic functions on my cameras. Automatic is the devil.
I know of a man who calls himself a professional, and even teaches some college photography courses, who shoots his cameras on Program mode.
To me.....that's just plain lazy.
And almost blasphemous.
I like to have more control over my images than that.


But then, most of the publications, organizations, people that I shoot for, only want the 'SAFE SHOT'.
OK...OK... I get that part(you know, correct shutterspeed,correct aperture, tack sharp, centered in the frame, mostly boring shot).---you can exchange the O for an I....same thang!!!!!

But what do you do when you're stuck down in turn four?
Your job is to get a good image of the wreck, when everyone's favorite driver comes by you on fire, upside down, his tongue flappin in the wind, and his eyes closed.
I've got that many times.



But what do you do when you're standing there, cocked and ready to fire, and nobody gets out of line, lap after lap after lap after lap after lap after......


Me?
I get bored shitless.
My mind get wandering.
I get playing with slow shutterspeeds and increased depth of fields, and short lens, tilted frames and.....OH SHIT!!!!!
Tony Stewart comes flying by you doing somersaults!
You position his car perfectly in the middle of the frame, squeeze the trigger,
And you nail it!!!!!
At 1/30 sec.
With a wide angle lens.
I know from experience.
This happened to me a few years back.


Or your shooting stock at a major College Football Bowl Game, both teams are in the middle of the field and you know neither one of them can move the ball, and you start dragging the shutter, 1/20 sec at F32.
Cool images. Nice blurs.
Sharp edges on the helmets and numbers.
The guy standing next to you looks over your shoulder while you're chimping.
He's impressed, and takes a few shots just like yours.


Do you possibly waste yours and a photo editors time with abstract images during Bowl season?
I didn't send them to my wire service.
I also didn't know at that time, that the guy looking over my shoulder submitted images to the same wire service that I did.
I figures that out months later, when he thanked me for the idea and told me he had made a couple hundred bucks off of the blurred images.

You just never know.

You cannot be a slave to your thoughts or equipment.


Experiment.
It's only pixels.
Waste as many as you need to, to get the shot right.


Thinks outside the box.
Find a different angle.
Know how to use your camera, don't let your camera use you.
Take it off the automatic functions and really get to know it.
Break the rules!!!!!


Don't shoot the same thing as everyone else.
Sometimes you have to. When I shoot for the Associated Press, I'm constantly being told 'No Getty Shit'.

But with a couple of publications that I shoot for, and my new wire service, they welcome anything different.


Play with your camera settings, get your flash off camera, do something different.
Don't be a slave to your equipment!