Being fascinated by photography and its process has been always profoundly inlaid into my life since my youngest years. As an avid reader of all kind of literature, magazines and newspapers, I was looking for first hand experiences, ideas or advices from experimented photographers and masters to learn the medium. All these marvelous books extracted from my ex-collection that only some of my precious hand guides have finally survived of my wrecked basement. One of those few was that small photographic hand book issued in 1972 by the Time-Life Library of Photography, named in french Le Guide du Photographe that was in fact a bonus gift attached to the Library of Photography complete collection. This short notebook was an introduction on how to take and process films and print pictures from them.
It is normal to ask yourself if this long gone artifact, could be of some help today in our digital world. But when we take time to reread those ancient and venerable short texts, they appear to stay more actual and more pertinent than we may think first. Here are some extracts that have still their pertinence:
How to hold a camera is a science that has been lost in the furious modern evolution of todays fashion (especially with the none ergonomically smartphones as photo devices). And with the event of all kind of electronic stabilization system (optical, sensor or digital ones), people have loose the necessity to correctly support a photo device but with a more secure support of the camera, you enhance your picture experience and you will pay a better attention to your composition and your subject position and its behaviour.
Choosing a particular lens focal length can have a real impact how your subject and its context are related. And simply zooming in and out is not always the best approach to consider in doing your picture. Moving back or forward (from the subject) can transform your foreground and your background and imply a different visual signification. It is an exercise of relation between every details that will be selected in the final photo composition.
The deep of field secret or how to discriminate or not the photographic subject in its space by deciding what will be privilege to be in sharp focus and what will be blurry (and how) into the final picture. In doing so, you are creating the points of interest that will be explored by the audience of your imagery. There is no definite rule as you may experiment the different lens aperture values that are associated to different deep of field specific ranges. Dont forget that the photographer distance from her/his subject can play also an important role here.
Selecting a film simulation as for an ISO sensibility for your digital camera sensor is exactly doing the same think we use to do during the film analog era. The implication of those imagery sensor interpretations will dictate in great parts the atmosphere associated with the final picture. Moreover it can prevent too much post-editing of your picture afterward because too much of it may often imply a visible lost of the picture definition. Better doing the good thing first at the point of origin.
Using (digital) filters will also alter your picture rendering right from the start and their dramatic effects can be observed before you actually are taking the picture. Monochrome filters will create contrast differentiations for the tonal distribution (in black and white, each tone is personified by a color). Art filters will completely change the value of the color’s palette, may modify the contrast scale, simulate optical effects, etc. The possibilities here are enormous.
A good exposure metering is essential for many reasons such as for keeping a maximum of the subject details you want, and for deciding what general "image mood" you are expecting to offer to the people who will look at it. Although the dynamic of the modern digital image sensor are surpassing by far the one from the past analog film era, there's still some compromises to cope with. One easy example is that a certain image definition degradation can be observed into the less lit picture areas that often translate in (digital) noise or detail lost (partly because of the inboard camera image post-processor algorithms that will over-compensate the lack of visual information). Exposure metering is still an essential technical part to succeed in photography almost a science by itself because it force you to better analyze the light distribution on your subject and its surrounding and that basic is still existing today.
Questioning your composition in relation with your subject and its context is again a photographic challenge that stay actual because it represent often the photographer intimate perception of it. Composition is also the finest expression of the visual emotion in regard of this subject. The dramatic is not only in regard of her/his facial expression but also in relation of its graphical position into the picture space. High, low, on-level angles of view, distance from, exposition metering, shutter speed, all those photographic elements can be decisive factors.
Understand photo editing (post-processing) of your picture was the ultimate task of the photographer of the analog-film era. Many picture taking people were disregarding the darkroom processing work. In doing so they have missed to understand a lot of the fundamentals involving photography. Editing a picture is like to reverse the image taking process. That way we can often pinpoint problems that have not been correctly addressed during the photographic session. It also help to learn the technical limit of the hardware-software we are using. Yes, you can transform an image but is it the final picture you primarily looking for at the decisive moment you have taken it? Most photo editing will mimic the way we were dealing with the film-analog picture but the work can be done now in comfort in a safe context with ecological respect.
All these examples are only a small part of what we can learn from this Time-Life small but precious booklet (and from others of the same kind) to prove that many of the past photographic practices stay actual, digital world or not. As I use to say, I will really be outdated when I will stop learning (and in particular from the past).
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Photo Illustrations by Daniel M: Fujifilm X-E4 / XF27mm F2.8 R WR
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