protimps

They say that Wayne Gretzky, the greatest hockey player ever, did more without the puck, than he did with it. Knowing where to be on the ice and how to use all the elements of the game put him in position to score and assist his teammates countless times.

In many respects, the art of capturing great images is the same. Think about it… if you travel to South Africa for a photo-safari and come home with a prize-winning image of a lion on the prowl, how much of your time was actually spent pressing the shutter and how much of your time was getting yourself ready and in the right position with the proper lighting conditions to make your image?

I see it all too often, bus-loads of snap-happy travelers scrambling down the steps of the bus, cameras readied at eye-level and firing at everything in front of them. That sort of scattered focus seldom delivers superior images. As photographers and artists we should aspire to put ourselves in position to capture the best images. We need the time to think about what’s in front of us. We need to decide what’s important to us in the frame of our camera. We need time to think about lens selection, depth of field, lighting conditions, style and so on. And we need the time to experience life because it is our life experiences that allow us to create images with depth and meaning that will move others who can relate to those experiences.

Photography is so much more than the camera in your hands. At its best, photography is the ability to share images of power and insight. Images that move others because we have taken the time to “create” rather than simply “record” what’s in front of us. In all of our images, our cameras should be invisible. It is important to understand, we are hero-makers, not Heroes.