Slow Photography?

One of my favorite trees (it has a beard just like mine) - picture taken at f3, 1/1000 and ISO 160 with the Nikon P-300. I had been planning this shot for weeks. I made a couple drive by's to check on the light at varying times of the day. That's the good thing about landscapes and such. They don't generally move or go anywhere so you have time to plan your shot - slow photography! Seems silly to take that long to set up and take a picture of a tree that's probably been there 50 years and then use a 1/1000 shutter speed but that is what the camera's automatic mode selected. I probably would have used f/8 at 1/125 because most lenses are at their best at around f8.

I also shot this same image with my new Pentax ZX-30 and some Velvia 100 and will share that with you as soon as I finish the roll and get the film back. It will be interesting to compare the results of the Pentax with the Nikon P-300.

The older I get the more I am into "slow!" I hate rushing around and prefer to just take my time with most things. Imagine my surprise when I ran across an article about slow photography! It really is not so much slow photography as it is methodical purposefull photography. You know, the way we used to do it back in the days before digital.

Don't get me wrong. Digital is great at least for some things. I especially like it for portraits and photographs of groups. How many times have you tried to take a picture of a group of people and everyone was looking at the camera and everything looked great so you took your shot only to find out afterwards that someone had blinked and had their eyes closed in the photo.

It's a lot easier with digital to take several shots and generally get at least one with everybody's eyes open. Still, for everything else I confess I prefer the old ways. Even with digital I like to plot and plan my shots. Rather than just taking a bunch of pictures and hoping that one will be a keeper (that seems to be the norm with digital) I prefer waiting until the right moment, when everything is right and taking one shot. That's the the old fashioned film photography way.

Yeah, yeah, even with film we bracket when necessary but we don't take a dozen photos to get one keeper out of the bunch. With film I generally take one shot, sometimes two, three at the most and only when bracketing or shooting a truly difficult composition. With digital I will generally take several shots - just to be sure. It's a completely different mindset & philosophy of photography.

 Anyway, here's the link if you want to read the whole article at the "Film Photography Project" web site. Good stuff. I heartily recommend it.

SPR: Slow Photography Rebellion! | Film Photography Project