Last weekend as I photographed the APA South Jersey World Qualifier Tournament competitors, so many asked me: Are you posting that now?
Well…no. And I had to suffer their disappointment. But the conversations inspired me to pen this short piece because I realized: Most people have no idea what a pro-photographer does.
Oh, sure, everyone understands photographers “take pictures.” But most people do not understand the difference between snapshooters and pros.
A snapshooter captures images with an inexpensive camera or camera phone – or even expensive tech – to memorialize or share a moment. The quick grab of an image is meant to share one’s experience on social media – and meant to fade within a few days like an Instagram post. To be replaced by a new image.
The snapshooter is not interested in artistic composition or technical perfection. He or she is merely trying to catch infant son Joey stuffing his face with spaghetti as more ends up on the walls and floor. Or the flowers in the garden. Or the waves at the shore. He or she wants that photo of the group’s ten-year reunion at the restaurant. Or Aunt Fran letting loose dancing at the family barbecue. The snap shooter wants that immediate memorialization to share, to communicate, to celebrate.
That quick snapshot is not the pro photographer’s goal.
The pro is hired to memorialize the moment, yes. But the pro is passionate about capturing that moment in an artistic manner. The pro’s images are meant to be kept forever – not posted and forgotten. The pro is meant to observe so the participant can…participate. The pro is an observer not a participant. And the images are meant to be treasured for a lifetime.
Snapshooters post the immediately-ready jpeg or png file right to social media or to email. But printing those images is quite challenging. The, for want of a better term, density of the image is low. So it looks great small on-screen. But blown up to a 5×7 results in a pixellated image of a bunch of dots.
Pros use expensive cameras and glass (lenses), yes. But pros also shoot in “raw.” Similar to a film negative, a raw file must be developed. Once I perform my first and second round edits, I proceed to develop the raw files into an image. I adjust elements like the crop – the composition of the image. Then the lighting, the color saturation, the sharpness…I eliminate fuzz on black shirts or other elements that detract from the focus of the image, including extraneous people. I then prepare several versions of the image for sharing on social media and for printing.
Sounds like it’s time consuming. And it is. For the tournament, I spent 40 or so hours shooting – and I’ll spend another 40 developing. (A one hour shoot takes me about an hour to develop…it’s pretty much 1:1.) I know some of my clients are frustrated that I don’t upload images to the social media circus the second I take the photo…but it’s worth the wait.
I see images of you, my clients, as works of art. Not disposable snapshots.
