New 50mm And Nachtwey

I picked up a new Nikon 50mm f1.8 lens for my camera the other day.  Its faster than my 18x200, that has been my travel lens of choice for many years.  The 50mm doesn't have a telephoto option, so it forces me to adjust my position relative to the subject, which is an added challenge for me.  With a telephoto lens I just zoom in or out as necessary, which is some respects has spoiled me a bit.

I watched James Nachtwey's War Photographer the other night and was dumbfounded firstly by his images, but moreover the amount of human suffering that he has borne witness to over his 25+ year career.  His compilation of work, Inferno, is filled with such tragic images that I could barley get through it without having to walk away and settle myself.  Nachtwey has reminded me of the immense human capacity for injuring and killing one another, and just how distant many of our lives are from the day-to-day suffering that occurs in so many places around or world.

Lessons Of A Rookie Photog

While I’ve been taking photos my entire life, I purchased my first serious camera about a year ago, a Nikon D200. Since that time I’ve taken thousands of shots, some have made it up on this blog, others into the Flickr community; most just sit idly on my MacBook Pro.

Here are some of the things that I’ve learned in my rookie year as an ‘enthusiastic’ photographer:

• Carry your camera with you. You can’t shoot if you don’t have it. Learn how to carry it unobtrusively in various situations so it doesn’t always have to be hanging around your neck like a tourist.

• When in doubt, shoot it. A digital shot doesn’t cost anything, so fire away.

• Try to go on photowalks where your primary purpose is to take shots of things. It makes you look at the world differently.

• Read your camera’s manual over and over again. Same for the lens and flash manuals. Know where all of the buttons and settings are and what they do.

• Learn your photo editing software. You’d be surprised with what you can do with a lousy shot and some editing skills.

• Don’t delete anything. Go back and look at your archives, there are some real gems there that you missed many months before when you were quickly picking shots to edit.

• Look at photos from other people either online or in magazines. You pick up things without even knowing it.

• Learn to be fast. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Be able to bring the lens to bare, frame, focus, shoot, and keep shooting.

• Learn some people skills. Some people don’t like thier photos taken, especially in other parts of the world. Learn to ask with a smile and a gesture towards the lens. Afterwards, show them the shots in the viewer as sort of a gesture of thanks and an acknowledgment of trust.

• Work on shooting unobtrusively. Again, slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

• Pay attention to light.

• Set you camera up ahead of time, ISO, White Balance, lens and AF settings. It saves from fumbling around with things when you should be shooting.

• Experiment with everything, and then experiment some more.

• Focus is everything. Almost everything can be fixed in post-production except poor focus.

Shooting The Neighborhood

When I get time I enjoy venturing out into the neighborhood on my own little photowalks. I’m always shadowed by a couple security guards supposedly protecting my hide while I’m searching for things to shoot. The guards are fun and love to strike armed, manly poses in front of everything that I look at.

Some days I find a lot of inanimate objects and really get into shooting these, trying to somehow capture the imperfections caused by age and wear. Many, many things here in the neighborhood are old and well worn, and it’s always a challenge to portray the feeling that the Japanese call wabi sabi.

Other days there are plenty of living subjects, but I’m not that good with people. I never have been. I end up getting a lot of stiff, smiling poses. I need to talk to the media cameramen and ask them how they get their impromptu, natural shots. I guess like anything else, practice.

Photowalk

A crippled father sits next to his daughter outside their villa. There is a distance between them.

I ventured outside the secure villa that we stay in and went for a short photowalk down the street. Flanked by two armed guards I got a chance to take some photographs of our neighborhood. People were friendly albeit curious. The guards were less than enthused about having to escort me down the street and back, but hey, I’m their boss.
Baghdad, like many ancient cities, is divided into neighborhoods, and within these are the ancestral homes of the families that make up the city. A person is known now and forever by the neighborhood that he or she grew up in; it defines them, empowers them, and even limits them.