I got my first "real" camera when I was thirteen--more years ago than I like to admit. It wasn't my first camera. I'd always been interested in taking pictures, and I was the one who'd used my parents' Instamatic until I got my own. You remember the Instamatic, right? It had that flash cube at the top that made a tremendous popping sound as the bulb burned out and turned a milky white. Instamatic film was a cartridge that you snapped into the back of the camera. As I recall, there were twelve or twenty-four pictures per cartridge--three to six flash cubes. (Picture via DustyGizmos)
Taking the pictures was fun, but the supplies were expensive, as was the processing. And you had to wait at least a week to get the pictures back. At which point, they didn't quite live up to what you remembered, especially if you'd been taking pictures of large landscapes, which lost their majesty, or small bugs, which lost their detail. The Instamatic was the king of snapshots, but it didn't quite suffice for anything else.
After that, I got a Polaroid. And it was amazing. (Fabulous image via Wired.) Imagine! No waiting, and the flash went on and on. Of course, the film was prohibitively expensive. And it didn't exactly do the trick for grand vistas. Still, the Instamatic was shoved aside in favor of the brand new love of my pre-teen life. It went everywhere with me, but I was careful about what I shot. After all, the film cartridges only contained something like ten pictures a pack, and they sucked up my allowance really quickly.
And then, at long last, came the Pentax. My first 35mm camera. The Polaroid's instant production didn't lose its appeal, but at last I was able to reproduce some of the things I hadn't caught before. I became obsessed with black and white images. I bought rolls and rolls of film. But black and white was hard to get processed. It took longer to come back from the lab. (Color, at the time, took about three days, while B&W took a week to ten days.) So while I actually preferred shooting black and white, I was always torn by my desire for instant gratification. Or at least, more instant.
For a while, I took pictures professionally. I worked for a Party Pix company in college. We shot wedding, graduations, proms, you name it. Then I did band photography for a while. I shot rugby games and ice hockey for local and college teams. It was all a lot of fun, and I wouldn't have missed it for anything. (Except the weddings. Weddings gave me ulcers--in the days before digital, there was always the chance you'd screwed up the shot somehow, or the film would be defective, or the processing wouldn't go right, and then you would have ruined someone's most important day.)
Here's the thing. I am absolutely positive that my experiences in amateur and professional photography, starting with that first 35mm SLR camera, have altered the way I see the world around me. How, exactly? Well, that's a more complicated question. One thing I've noticed: because I shot so much more black and white than color, I have a tendency not to "see" color as much. When I shoot nowadays, I'll be surprised--when I download the images to my computer--by some glaring orange flag or something in the background. In my own mind, I thought of it as gray, I guess. Of course, with digital, it's no big deal. I just turn that picture into black and white, or otherwise "fix" the issue. But I am sure there are other effects that aren't as obvious.
And I'm equally sure that the way I see things affects the way I write.
The other night, my husband and I were out to dinner and there was a little girl, maybe six or seven, who was playing with a digital camera. Hers? Her parents'? Hard to tell. It looked like the little digital we take on vacations, the modern version of the Instamatic. But all through dinner, this little girl kept looking through the viewfinder, taking the occasional picture of a waiter or her mother or her brother or even her food. Nobody had to tell her to be careful not to waste the film or the flash.
I wonder whether the ease of putting oneself behind the camera will result in further distance between people. As a shy teen, I absolutely used the camera as a shield. On the other hand, it doesn't seem to have affected my five-year-old nephew, who has his own digital camera. It looks sort of like binoculars and is built so he (or, more importantly, his little brother) can't destroy it. In fact, every picture must immediately be shown to everyone around him, so it furthers the connection, rather than the separation.
And what of the speed and cheapness of "processing?" Will people who shoot more often get a better "eye" for composition, or are the two independent issues?
And, back to the issue of this blog, will writing change as the physical manner in which people view their surroundings changes?
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
The Way I See It
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9 comments:
First, I can't believe your photography history is almost identical to mine. The only differences are that my grandfather gave me something like a Brownie when I was very small, and the professional photos I took were as a newspaper reporter and magazine writer.
Second, to answer your question, it might for some people. I think that the people who already have an eye for detail won't be affected. But the people who don't notice details naturally may begin to pick up on them more with the help of digital photography and videos and may then begin to incorporate them more and more in their writing. I've always been detail oriented. What the camera does for me is to help me better remember the actual or exact details.
Some people, of course, have no eye for detail because they just don't think it's important. For them, it's the broad picture that counts.
Laura,
This is a thought provoking column. As writers we "show don't tell." But if digital cameras may alter how people see things, then over time that may alter how we write scenes.
I say this as a woman who doesn't own a camera. I have, however, bought those indestructible plastic digital cameras for all of my grandkids aged three and older. As you describe, all five of them enjoy viewing the world through their own viewfinder. I especially have to laugh when they delete pictures they don't like!!
Terrie
A very interesting post about the way we see. Some years ago I tried painting. A good experience because I learned two things: 1. I will never be a good painter. 2. I began noticing colours (e.g. it dawned on me that trees and plants are never just green). When I write fiction, I try to remember what painting taught me about observing a scene, noticing the colours and the ´insignificant´ details.
Thanks, Dorte! I should try painting--I can't draw a straight line with a ruler, but I bet it would be a very educational experience.
Elaine, that's so funny about our similar histories!
Terrie - they're very definite about which ones are acceptable, aren't they?
Laura- cool post. It makes me think of the set dressers and Golden Era costumers who had to do that mental translation of how a color looks under the stage spots or in B&W. They evaluated everything differently based on the final effect.
I've been through all the camera flavors, too, and it does change your mental frame. But what impressed me most was your originality when you addressed painting in the comments. As an artist, I can attest that 99% or people say, "Paint? I can't even draw stick figures!" What a delight to read something different. Aaaaahhh.
Wonderful post, Laura. It brings back memories of the cameras I've owned. During my teen years, I took a camera with me wherever I went. I brought some of them to my 30th HS reunion this past August.
When I took up scrapbooking in 2001, my picture taking changed a bit...taking photos of things I normally wouldn't have bothered taking before scrapbooking became a part of my life. So I started to see things differently, I guess. Sort of how it is since I turned to writing full-time, when I hear great phrases in a conversation, I have to get out a notebook and jot it down. I'm listening differently, too!
I'm getting spoiled by reading blogs that practice the fine art of mixing photos with words. The fiction I read has no photos to add a visual dimension. It's all up to me.
If fiction and photos/drawings were married, like they are in "comic" books or newspapers, I'd have a more instantaneous view of the writer's vision, so to speak. The Hardy boys, like so many of their era, had a drawing at the beginning of each chapter, or so my memory goes. Kinda like the catchy titles heading chapter, orienting you to what happened/what comes next.
It's a lot easier to read when there are pictures interspersed, but there's a problem with that: the reader's vision of the characters and the settings are GIVEN instead of being imagined. In a contest between words and pictures, the pics tend to win, hands-down. I glance at the photos in my newspaper and often find that one look is worth a thousand words.
I'm caught between two worlds: the photo versus the complex integration of verbally-transmitted descriptions. I'm at odds with myself over this. Thanks for your posting that prompted all this thought!
That's my 2 cents, for what they're worth!
It's an intriguing question, Nan. Like the question of how much description to include of a character. How much do we want to control the reader's vision?
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