The Decisive Moment

I guess because I learned on a analog camera, I have never been used to autofocus or a camera that does it all for me. My style isn’t for everyone because I’m slow and methodical. I rarely do group shoots with other photographers because photography is my world and I don’t really want to hear your opinion when you don’t know what you're talking about.

I met a point and click photographer this week, well if you can call them that, I think they prefer the name Tog and that gives you a clue to there style and ability and yes I’m being general but I don’t care. Maybe I’m a little more touchy because my first group styled shoot was interrupted while I was shooting by a random guy with a camera, you know the type they talk a lot but there camera is on auto mode. He first told me he saw the perfect shot, then asked the model who was also in shock if he could take her image. This was not his first time interrupting me like we were friends, entitlement. earlier on in the day I had been shooting another model and he was in the same space telling a trans woman how beautiful she was and how he preferred her body and style to most other models. Flag number 2 this trans woman repeatedly told him she was a trans woman and he told her if she looks and acts like a woman that’s what she is. Pushy photographers are not the greatest, while telling her how sexy she was he handed me a light and told me to shoot without my flash and put my camera onto auto mode. Wow the shock and cheek of this guy to think he was being helpful when he wasn’t that great.

I guess I was raised before digital in fact I tested the one of the first digital cameras for fujifilm. So my brain sees what happens when I use the settings on my camera rather than my camera doing all the work and photoshop finishing the job.

I complete the job in my camera with the settings I want and photoshop is like my darkroom it adds a few bits I might have missed. Henry Cartier-Bresson taught me to wait for the right moment and when you're not in control of your camera you're not in control of the content.

So if you are a point and shoot, learn some skills and leave people alone if you don’t know what you're doing because next time I might be rude.