ARCHIVE FOR February, 2009
I THOUGHT ITS AN EXCUSE. WELL, ITS NOT
On my travel holiday the last 18 months I spend a lot of time with my Canon 400D and 4 different lenses. Now, back in Germany, a time where I want to become more professional and less semi professional I definitely needed to think about about a new camera. So I bought the new Canon 5D Mark II with 21 mbpx and told myself while giving my VISA Card to the guy behind the desk in the shop:”I need this camera, I will take more pictures. I will take so many pictures, I know I will. “This conversation with my guilty conscience I had before when buying equipment for my camera and it didn’t turn out the way it supposed to be in terms of taking more pictures. Well, now, since I have this new camera its incredible exciting, how much MORE fun I have taking pictures. The 5D MK II is so easy to handle and finally brings me the quality of pictures I am looking for. Sharp pictures first of all. For sure one reason is that my lenses can now proof their qualities, since the 5D MK II is a full format chip camera. My Canon 400D wasn’t and all my lenses were cropped with a factor of 1.6. Means: My 28mm ƒ1.8 turned into a 44,8mm (28×1.6). Now I get even better results and feel ready to shoot Barack Obama, Mickey Mouse and other well known politicians. Additional to my camera I equipped myself with a light system by Bowens. I can finally play with light and learn more, more, more and more again. Awesome. Lucky I am to have the time since I don’t have any jobs. *blink* *blink*. Some results you see in earlier posts below this one.
To be out there every single day (I like that expression) is definitely more fun now with good stuff to work with.
A LITTLE STREET CLOSE TO MY HOME
TIMO & THE HIS TIME AT HOME
ONE STEP FURTHER. TESTING NEW EQUIPMENT
I decided to be a photographer and its a good decision I made. Its a good decision because I know I want to do it. But I am tired of running around and ask for peoples permition to photograph them and although they might say yes, I am not happy with the result. I figured out earlier on already that shooting people and ask for their permition doesn’t satisfy me and doesn’t help the picture. They’re just starring into the camera, not in their natural environment and observing their self while I take my picture. Its so hard to take pictures and it leads to the point where I feel less confident taking my camera to go out and try. To ask people I meet randomly on the streets to take pictures of them in their home seems to be even harder to get a trustworthy response. People don’t trust you. They are mostly certainly sure about the fact, that you want to do evil things. Therefore I need to meet people more often and ask them after a while if there is any possibility to photograph them. To meet people though and get to know them takes time. Especially in Hamburg people stay with the hood they know already and its hard to meet people when there is no connection through a friend. Everybody knows somebody through somebody. I complained about Americans who worry about unknown people without realizing how close our way of culture is. And Americans’ sometimes superficial way of acting is certainly a little more active the way we act here, but there is not much of a difference between Germans and Americans in the end. Actually, the American way is much easier to get to know new people and to try to keep connected longer than 5 minutes should be the task. In Germany though its difficult to just make the first connection by talking randomly to people. They mostly think you are strange because you want to chat. Since I learned that the places I can’t deal with very great are the best to learn and I hope I take the necessary steps to go towards those hesitations and ask more people. I thought through and through my travels that talking to foreigners and taking photographs of them is hard, but in a world where 99% don’t have a camera and never dealt with one, of course they are more excited compared to people from a country where a DSLR is nothing special.
Nevertheless, to come back and stop traveling is harder than I thought and to come back to my country and see more clearly where I am from and what I am made of explains a lot the way I hesitated to take pictures abroad back in the time. Photography here is way more about copy right of the own pictures than it is about the picture by it self. I guess I need to get used to it and train myself more in patience. To take the same quality of pictures I took so far in a world which is unknown is easier than in a world which is known. It requires way different kind of abilities and a different kind of dealing with people. Funny I thought its easier in a country where I speak the language. So far so good. Patience is the key here and just keep trying. Well hard times are good times. I will recognize later how good.
I’ll concentrate the next few weeks on studio photography anyways and look forward to work with light and make my experiments as you can see above these lines of wisdom.
LENNARD AZMY
