Chapter Three

Chapter Three
Welcome back to class kiddies, I’m finally uploading chapter three, or numero tre or more likely ‘Wow, he thinks people really want a third, blow.’ So what enlightening subject are you all in line for today…. I’m thinking we shall talk about photography.
Seems a bit obvious doesn’t it, well in fairness no one really wants to hear any of the other opinions I have. Every time I lobby Parliament about major issues I just get shot down. I mean seriously, taxes, high health insurance costs and over the top politician benefits are something we can’t change, but we sure can do something about people putting pineapple on pizzas!! Sorry I digress, let’s have a little look at what I’ve been up to since my last rant, in that one I’d just come back from the Mid America truck show, or as I like to refer to it, Nirvana.
Well I have been flat out with the automotive stuff since then, with a new opportunity, coming in the form of the top blokes behind Cruzin magazine. I was approached by them to see if I would be interested in getting into some car photography, obviously I didn’t have to think about it for long, or at all really. When opportunity knocks on your door, you’ve got to lace those shoes up and dance to it’s tune. A mix of metaphors but you get the point.
Anyway, I’d better get onto some updates ah, I’m trying to finish this blog while on a plane heading to Townsville. I’d like to say it’s because the Brisbane mornings have been getting too cold after all I’ve had to resort to putting a hoodie on! But people will start asking me to hand in my ‘Raised in NZ’ card for being too soft. Truth is I’m heading up to Townsville to chase a couple of stories for Bauer group. This blog has been in my computer since I started it a month or so ago, but I tend to get easily distracted so I thought I’d better finish it. Finally.
What I will focus on for this blog is my approach/view/attitude towards photography. I get a lot of people asking questions like ‘What camera do you use?’ ‘How did you shoot that?’ ‘What’s the best settings for this, that and the other?’ As well as questions related to other people’s photos, like ‘do you like this shot?’ or ‘How should I shoot that?’
Let me start by stating one thing, I’m no expert lol I still have those moments where I forget to take the lens cap off. (Not often, but it’s sadly true.) Photography is very much like life and everything else in it. It’s all a learning curve. We aim to get better and better each shoot, each day. A very wise man once said something that the photographer Glynn Lavender repeated to me, “don’t compare yourself to anyone else, just try and be better than you were last year.” Glynn, who runs Creative Photography Workshops down in Melbourne, has come up with a lot of great philosophical outlooks to photography. If you ever get a chance to do one of his courses I thoroughly recommend it. You will learn more in one of his classes than any amount of Youtube and dare I say Uni classes out there. It’s not all glitz glamour and education though, he does have a tendency to sing, far too much.
The long and the short of it is, it really doesn’t matter what other people think of your photos. Photography is an art form, therefore it’s open to interpretation. Obviously when you are doing commercial work, family portraits, weddings and stuff you could argue it does matter what certain other people think, but ninety nine percent of the time you’ve been hired based on the work you’ve already done. That work must appeal to the client already so if you tie that in with the ‘make each shoot better than the last’ idea, then by happenstance the client will be happy as well.
All that positive affirmation stuff aside, handing photos over to clients is still one of the most nerve wracking parts of the job. Every photographer is their own worst critic and being my own critic is one of the few thing I excel at, eating cheese rolls (a kiwi delicacy everyone should try), finding excuses to skip the gym and leaving the lens cap on are a few other things I excel at. But I think that is a good thing, it helps you get better. The social media driven world we live in today could make it very easy for us to get carried away. A pure example of this occurred on my page www.facebook.com/WarrenAitkenphotography recently. I had a shoot with six stunning T909 Kenworths for Brown and Hurley. After the challenge of positioning them in such a way to hide certain parts of certain trucks that hadn’t been completely finished I jagged some great shots with my trusty Nikons. (See photos attached) Before I left I did a standard Samsung Galaxy phone photo which I posted as a BTS shot on my page. It was an ok angle, an ok shot, however it has gone bonkers on Facebook. Obviously not ‘Kim Kardashian buys new shoes’ kind of bonkers but nearing a thousand likes and several hundred shares. What it shows is that in the world of hashtags and selfies with your tacos, popularity is driven by the subject not the quality. It pays to get neither over confident or reversely, over-critical if a photo of yours doesn’t get the attention it warrants.
Any-way I think I really have gotten carried away with my level of waffling today, must be the thin air up here. Or maybe it’s too many chardonnays in Business class…. Yea right. My point is and I’m writing this not as a lecture but also as a reminder for myself. Photography is in the eye of the beholder, if you are happy with your shots then be proud, be confident. If you’re not happy that’s when you can simplify things. Photography is all about problem solving! Well, problem solving and light. Ok problem solving, light and composition. Hold on, can’t forget posing either, or shutter speed. Oh jeeze, it’s also about aperture! Light, composition, posing, aperture, control, shutter speed, ISO, yip photography is complicated. But a wise man also once told me to look at a photo, work out what I don’t like and then work out what I need to do to fix it. Problem solving. Once again it may have been Glynn that told me that, but I’m easily distracted by dad jokes and he also does a lot of that as well.
Let’s finish Chapter three with a cool quote from Imogen Cunningham, “which of my photographs is my favourite? The one I take tomorrow.”