“Photography is not about carrying more equipment. It is about noticing more life.” – MJ Martin
The Best Camera May Be the One You Forget About
Photographers love cameras. We debate sensor sizes, lenses, autofocus systems, dynamic range, megapixels and image stabilization with almost religious enthusiasm. For serious photographers, particularly those carrying professional mirrorless equipment, leaving the camera at home can feel almost irresponsible.
Yet occasionally, that may be exactly what we should do.
Set aside the dedicated camera. Leave the carefully selected lenses behind. Put the tripod back in the closet. Take nothing except the smartphone already in your pocket and spend a day making photographs.
The purpose is not to prove that an iPhone or another smartphone is better than a professional camera. It is not. The purpose is to remove the equipment from the creative equation.
“The camera records the scene, but the photographer discovers it.”
Photography Is About Seeing
A sophisticated camera can sometimes become a barrier between the photographer and the photograph. We begin thinking about focal lengths, aperture settings, shutter speeds, filters and lenses before we have even decided what attracted us to the scene.
A smartphone changes that relationship.
There is very little preparation. You see something interesting, lift the phone, compose and photograph it. The technical process becomes almost invisible.
It is rather like a musician occasionally sitting down at a simple piano instead of entering a recording studio filled with sophisticated equipment. The simplicity forces attention back onto melody. For photographers, the smartphone forces attention back onto light, composition, colour, shape, timing and emotion.
Those are the ingredients that actually make photographs memorable.
“A great photograph begins long before the shutter is pressed. It begins the moment you truly notice the world.”
Limitations Encourage Creativity
Professional cameras provide extraordinary flexibility. That flexibility is valuable, but it can also make us lazy.
If we have a 14mm lens, a 24 to 70mm zoom, a 70 to 200mm lens and perhaps a 400mm telephoto available, we can solve almost any compositional problem by changing lenses.
A smartphone removes many of those choices.
Suddenly, your feet become the zoom lens.
You move closer. You step backwards. You crouch down. You look through windows. You photograph reflections. You search for unusual foreground objects. You begin thinking about how to create depth with composition rather than simply reaching into the camera bag.
Constraints can be remarkably productive. A painter working with only three colours must think differently about colour. A photographer working with only a smartphone must think differently about seeing.
“The finest lens you will ever own is curiosity.”
Rediscovering Everyday Photography
Canada provides an extraordinary environment for this kind of exercise because compelling photographs exist almost everywhere. They do not require a trip to Banff, Peggy’s Cove, or Niagara Falls.
Walk through downtown Toronto on a rainy evening. Photograph reflections from streetcars and storefronts. Wander through a small Ontario town early in the morning. Study frost on a window, shadows crossing an old brick wall or the geometry of a railway platform.
The exercise teaches an important lesson.
Photography does not begin when we arrive somewhere spectacular.
Photography begins when we start paying attention.
“You do not need a camera bag full of lenses to find beauty. You only need to be awake to the world around you.”
Give Yourself a Smartphone-Only Day
Every photographer should occasionally declare a smartphone-only photography day.
Do not treat it as inferior photography. Treat it as training.
Forget megapixels. Forget pixel peeping. Forget whether the image could survive being printed three metres wide. Concentrate instead on whether the photograph communicates something.
Did you recognize interesting light?
Did you discover a composition other people walked past?
Did you capture a moment that existed for only a second?
If the answer is yes, then the exercise worked.
“Sometimes the best way to sharpen your vision is to carry less and see more.”
The Camera Was Never the Point
There is wonderful equipment available to photographers today, and there is enormous pleasure in using it. A professional camera remains an extraordinary creative instrument.
But equipment should serve vision, not replace it.
Occasionally leaving the camera at home reminds us of something remarkably easy to forget.
The most important piece of photographic equipment is not hanging around your neck.
It is behind your eyes.
About the Author:
Michael Martin is the Vice President of Technology with Metercor Inc., a Smart Meter, IoT, and Smart City systems integrator based in Canada. He has more than 40 years of experience in systems design for applications that use broadband networks, optical fibre, wireless, and digital communications technologies. He is a business and technology consultant. He was a senior executive consultant for 15 years with IBM, where he worked in the GBS Global Center of Competency for Energy and Utilities and the GTS Global Center of Excellence for Energy and Utilities. He is a founding partner and President of MICAN Communications and before that was President of Comlink Systems Limited and Ensat Broadcast Services, Inc., both divisions of Cygnal Technologies Corporation (CYN: TSX).
Martin served on the Board of Directors for TeraGo Inc (TGO: TSX) and on the Board of Directors for Avante Logixx Inc. (XX: TSX.V). He has served as a Member, SCC ISO-IEC JTC 1/SC-41 – Internet of Things and related technologies, ISO – International Organization for Standardization, and as a member of the NIST SP 500-325 Fog Computing Conceptual Model, National Institute of Standards and Technology. He served on the Board of Governors of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) [now Ontario Tech University] and on the Board of Advisers of five different Colleges in Ontario – Centennial College, Humber College, George Brown College, Durham College, Ryerson Polytechnic University [now Toronto Metropolitan University]. For 16 years he served on the Board of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), Toronto Section.
He holds three master’s degrees – in business (MBA), communication (MA), and education (MEd). As well, he has three undergraduate diplomas and seven major certifications in business, computer programming, internetworking, project management, media, photography, and communication technology. He has completed over 80 next generation MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) [aka Micro Learning] continuous education programs in a wide variety of topics, including: Economics, Python Programming, Internet of Things, Cloud, Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive systems, Blockchain, Agile, Power BI, Big Data, Design Thinking, Security, Indigenous Canada awareness, and more.
Martin is a volunteer, a photographer, a learner, a technologist, a philosophizer, and a romantic optimist.