New Lightweight Definition
Lofoten Islands, Norway March 2012
Copyright: Robin Whalley 2012 – but feel free to repost and share
Contact: robin@lenscraft.co.uk
When I decided to start this blog it was my intention to discuss the creation of great photography of professional quality using lightweight equipment; that is smaller and lighter than the usual DSLR and accessories. Having thought this through further I think there is a need for another dimension to this definition. Rather than concentrating on size and weight I think the third dimension is time and for a very important reason. Creating great photography seems to be taking me more and more time these days.
Since turning digital some 10 years back I have found the role of the photographer has dramatically changed and is taking far more time. Consider the idea of a stock library. In the old world (pre digital) a photographer would typically shoot and submit slides to agencies, keeping records of who had what. The agency would record, file, keyword, possibly scan the work as well as promote the photographer (if you were lucky). Now all of this work has passed to the photographer including with some agencies the role of promoting the photographer and their work. There are a few exceptions but generally there is much more for the photographer to do with rates of return much lower than they were 10 years ago. It’s therefore necessary for the photographer who wants to earn decent money in stock to be as efficient as possible, or to put it another way have a lightweight workflow.
Even if you don’t want to make your living at photography but just want to produce great work, you still need to store and catalogue your images. You need to spend time converting the images from to TIFF files and then perfect your vision using tools such as Photoshop. All this adds up to time on your computer rather than time behind the camera. This is something that we need to address and a new dimension that I will try to cover in my future blogs.
Copyright: Robin Whalley 2012 – but feel free to repost and share www.thelightweightphotographer.com
See more of my work at www.lenscraft.co.uk
The Lightweight Photographer 