A Bit of An Extreme, or Not

(from upper-left to clockwise) GX200 with the wide-angle converter, GXR P10, CX1, CX3 and R10

Taken together the GX200 which took this photo, I am handling six Ricoh cameras in one go. The thought of making such a line-up shot compelled me to do it. I looked at the image and mumbled, "This is a bit of an extreme."

Really? I doubt.

Although I don't own all of these cameras, I bet lots of us have as many cameras – maybe overlapping ones too -- as shown in the photo. These owners have simply been compelled to buy. Honestly, most of us have either become sophisticated camera buyers, review readers or technology connoisseurs or all of them than real photographers.

But, to another extreme, are you too sophisticated a photographer? I mean, maybe you have been engrossed in all sorts of knowledge about photography to beef up your photographic skills. Then, having read books on the topic aplenty and after a full day of shooting, you discover that the images are technically overwhelming but soulless.

More often than not, we find ourselves in this quagmire of being either an extreme camera critic or an extreme photography learner. We may have got over it but later on, we could be trapped again. It is also our experience that we stumble upon a photo by a tyro which is however one of the best we have ever seen. It is expressed with such a huge sense of freedom that you see not the strengths of the camera or the rules of photography but just the soul of the photographer.

If you feel yourself a bit of an extreme after all these years in photography, why don't you pick up your camera and shoot as your eye sees it and your heart dictates? Free yourself of the bondage to the technicality of the camera or the principles of photography which you have known enough, and just observe with your soul and shoot.

You wanna be a bit of an extreme, or not. For me, not.

Comments

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