​Love the process of shooting more than the result

Photographers love photography for many different reasons. Almost every photographer's interest is multifaceted. I was 77 when I wrote this, and photography has been a big factor in my life since I was 17. I was never a professional photographer, although for a few years I was a semi-professional photographer, covering high school sports for a weekly newspaper at night and on weekends. However, I started in the photographic equipment business at 23 and retired completely at 73. I work for a manufacturer and distributor of photographic equipment, mainly professional photographic products.

Love the process more than the result

When I was in my 60s, I bought a small digital camera with a zoom lens and started shooting again. After a while I wasn't satisfied with the quality of the camera, so I bought a SONY APS-C no-reflection camera and quickly expanded my interest. I have rediscovered an interest in landscape and travel photography, and my travel photographs are mostly landscapes, mountains, oceans, deserts -- these are all subjects that interest me -- but the urban themes are less important.

I must also admit that I have had a long-standing fascination with the technical aspects of photography, especially the lens. A few years ago, I was exposed to a lot of lens products in my job and learned a lot about them. Although I am not a lens designer, I did learn the features and disadvantages of various lenses and how to optimize performance and the development of photo imaging technology continues to fascinate me.

A few years ago, I discovered an interesting quirk in my photography process. The process of viewing and taking a picture in the viewfinder is often more important to me than the result; It still is to me today. In the film era, people shot the film and sent it to a printing shop, waiting a week to see the results. Obviously, digital photography today allows us to see photos instantaneously. But I usually have to wait a few weeks to copy the photos to my computer, which is actually about as long as I wait to shoot the film.

This discovery made me more interested in the process than in the images. At this point, over the past few years, I have been trying to understand my personal spiritual journey, including abandoning much of what I learned growing up and seeking a new understanding of my existence and its meaning. For example, if taking a photograph is indeed recognition of creation, then naturally we should do our best to make the photograph as good as possible within the limits of the situation. But don't we always do that? It would be a sad comment on ourselves if we did not.

If we accept that taking pictures is an important and meaningful thing, shouldn't we be using the best equipment we can afford? Within reason, I think the answer has to be yes. But wait! For example, if we shoot a daylight scene, we certainly don't need an F /1.2 lenses, and a smaller aperture can do the job. At The F /8, most zoom lenses are almost as good as the best large-bore prime lenses.

The photos are taken, downloaded to the computer, and then what do you do? Nowadays, most photographers go into post-processing to beautify their pictures. This brings us to an important disagreement. Personally, I usually just want to see what "errors" I can clean up, such as removing dust spots, leveling the horizon, changing obvious exposure Settings, correcting color temperatures, and so on. I can also use other programs to sharpen images and eliminate noise. But I refuse to do more. If this picture is really an affirmation of the beauty of creation, then it seems to me that anything that changes this picture is denying the beauty of creation.

The work of Ansell Adams is a good example. His famous photographs are representative, but it is clear that he was a master darkroom, using his techniques to make the most of the images he saw and took. Nevertheless, his approach is clearly designed to be faithful to what he sees. Under normal circumstances, thousands of pictures of the Grand Canyon are taken every day. But few people realize how much the image taken in the second makes a difference to the image taken in the previous second.