Let’s start with some semantics:
Talent: is your innate ability to do something – it’s inborn, and for the purposes of this essay, you can’t change it. It’s fixed. Think of it as your starting point; you also can’t lose it.
Creativity: in the photographic context centers around your ability to construct a unique composition from a given scene. It’s a continuum; the more different your composition to anything that’s come before, the more creative you are. This applies for both the elements you can control (e.g. studio lighting, flashes, focal length/ perspective etc) and the ones you can’t – the subject, for instance. The amount of creativity a person has is generally fixed; however, unlike talent, you can train yourself to be more creative.
Experience: is the knowledge you gain from having done something (or something related and relevant) before – for instance, if you’ve used a fire before, you know it’s hot and you won’t put your hand into it because it hurts. In a photographic context, it could be something as simple as knowing that telephoto lenses work better for wildlife photography than wide angles, or it could be as subtle as choosing a thick carbon-fiber monopod over a thinner steel one for its rigidity and vibration damping properties to enable as low a shutter speed as possible. This is the biggest area of opportunity for all photographers.
It’s easier to understand where I’m going next if you have a baseline: I’ll use myself as a guinea pig, and score out of 10; 10 being the best and 0 being poke-your-eyes-out-with-a-stick bad.
Ming, in 2003 (Brand-new, wet-behind-the-ears hobby photographer. Doesn’t know the first thing about shutter speeds, finds aperture numbering confusing, and can’t figure out the whole perspective thing.) Here’s an early shot:
Random abstract.
At the time, I thought this was actually one of my better ones. Shocking, huh? I think nobody would question an assessment of Talent = 0. Creativity – hmm, harder to judge; it obviously isn’t really a standard shot, but at the same time…execution is lacking. I’ll be generous and say this merits a 5 on the creativity scale. It does tell us something about the experience rating, though: had I known better, I wouldn’t have overexposed, and I’d have used a tripod. I’d probably also have selected a more suitable exposure combination commensurate to the effect I was trying to achieve. Let’s give experience another zero.
Fast forward a bit to today.
Ming, in 2012 (Getty Images member, Nikon Professional Services UK member, Leica Camera-sponsored, veteran of countless pro shoots, etc…I’ll stop blowing my own horn now 😉
Jaeger Le-Coultre Gyrotourbillon 2 escapement
I don’t think anybody would argue that this is an easy shot to produce. It requires advance knowledge and mastery of a) lighting; b) composition and visual balance; c) being able to see the unique in something not immediately visible or obvious (the frame covers approximately 12x8mm); d) post processing; e) familiarity with the subject itself; f) the ability to get one’s equipment to deliver exactly what is required.
So what’s changed in the last nine years? My talent remains the same: it can’t change, and it’s approximately still zero. My creativity has definitely improved; I’m both trying different things and executing them so that they manage to communicate my initial vision – that shot was supposed to give the impression of an x-ray view into the heart of a complex machine, which this particular watch absolutely is.
But the biggest improvement is experience: in the last nine years, I’ve shot more than half a million frames – some in the course of getting the shot for a particular assignment or location; some out of pure experimentation; and some just in the course of capturing and recording life as I see it. But each one of those frames has given me the benefit of being able to refine my skills incrementally more. Although the laws of diminishing returns definitely kicked in a long time ago, I’m told there’s still some progress going on. The way I shoot now is not the same as the way I shot even a year or two ago.
Shooting lots is one thing – but remembering what you’ve learned is even more important, otherwise you’ll hit diminishing returns pretty early on in the process. There are many times where I’ll do experiments concentrating on one particular aim only – for instance, refining my x-ray processing technique – and ignoring the other elements. Or perhaps it might be to master the use of lighting very small reflective objects at close distances. I probably won’t keep any of these experiments because compositionally they don’t work (and that wasn’t the point) – but it’s the experience and knowledge that’s important. And then when I *do* need to put it all together – the above shot, for instance – then I have confidence that my techniques and experience will let me pull it off.
There is no substitute for experience. There’s plenty of evidence to support that it takes 10,000 hours of dedicated practice to master something – give or take a little depending on whether you do it continuously (benefit of not forgetting between sessions and having to backtrack or repeat) and your intellect. This means one task, continuously, for three years or more. And that’s why there were a) so few master photographers in the film days (practice cost a lot of time and money, and there was a delay between taking the shot and getting feedback, during which it was easy to forget what you tried) – and b) lots of ‘new talent’ emerging today.
Which brings us to the conclusion of this article: I’m often asked what is the one best tip I can give to an aspiring photographer: practice, practice, practice. I still do it, and I’m still learning. MT
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A couple more Nikon D800 images, and some commentary
Shadows. Nikon D800, 28-300VR
One of the big questions that’s been running around the internet is whether the D800 can replace medium format – the answer isn’t quite as simple as you might think. Firstly, the resolution is definitely there to compete with the lower pixel count options – and even more so once the D800E joins the fray. However, a very large part of the medium format ‘look’ is a product of the interaction between lenses, sensor size (i.e. angle of view) and tonal response of the sensor. Remember that almost all medium format sensors are CCDs, which have a very different – and less linear – tonal response to CMOS sensors. For comparison at the 35mm/FX size, the D700 and D800 both have a different tonal palette to the CCD-based Leica M9. Undoubtedly the look is different already due to no other factors.
However, once you consider the angle of view vs DOF equation, then things look different again – it’s similar to the difference between APSC and full frame – for a given angle of view and aperture, you’re going to have ever decreasing depth of field (and quicker transitions between in-focus and out of focus areas) with the larger sensors.
Some of the other things which have been of concern to shooters – like having enough light and decent support – are nothing new in the medium format world, especially to users of very high resolution backs like the IQ180 or H4D-MS; this is perhaps why a lot of people are crying ‘so what?’. Even so, good support pays off for both medium and smaller formats – even compact shooters have something to gain. The tradeoff is always weight and flexibility.
A quick note on color reproduction: the D800 has the most accurate color I’ve ever seen. This seems to be corroborated by the recent batch of DXOMark tests, which rank the D800 first (!). Most cameras have trouble accurately reproducing the blue-green-cyan tone of glass reflections (due to UV transmission/ reflection issues) – but the D800 required only minimal corrections. Furthermore, the very fine repeating patterns between the squares on the textured floor panels do not show visible moire, but plenty of detail. It’s also worth noting that nothing is blown out, and I crushed the shadows for the visual effect – there weren’t any blocked up blacks, either.
The look. Nikon D800, 28-300VR
Again, I was very pleased with the quarter tone reproduction quality here. I’m actually finding that for a lot of images – especially those with less contrast – you need to apply a curve with a very long, shallow shadow tail in order to get the right ‘look’. This is undoubtedly due to the D800’s huge dynamic range at low ISOs. As for detail, you can see the weave in the man’s shirt and my reflection in his glasses.
Bike traffic. Nikon D800, 28-300VR
This shot was a test in many ways – extreme highlights and shadows; lots of fine detail; tonality of B&W conversions. The short answer is, the camera passes. The image (which looks much better on a large monitor at full size, by the way) retains good detail even into the extreme corners, despite being shot with the weakest end of the 28-300VR, and has nice rich quarter and half tones, which make for a good B&W image.
The reader and the thinker. Nikon D800, 28-300VR
This portrait is a little deceptive, because there was a lot less light than it appears – 1/125s at ISO 1800, f5.6 and 150mm. Yet the camera held on to shadow details well – with remarkably little noise, I might add – and I can read the text in the newspaper at full size. I don’t think the files make as outright punch B&W conversions as say the Leica M9-P, but black and white conversions from the D800 seem to have a unique signature of their own – perhaps best characterized by subtle tonal gradations and deep shadow detail. In short, I like what I’m seeing, but I’m going to need to adapt the processing style a little to get the most out of it. MT