[Leica] Tina said what?!

[don.dory at gmail.com (Don Dory)]

I'm going to chime in on this one.  If you look at my PAW's going back five
or six years, I shoot a lot of children, other peoples children in all kinds
of siturations.  I use all kinds of cameras.  I am the same person and my
attitude toward photography doesn't change when I am toting a different
body/lens combo around.  When I am shooting with the M6/M3 no one notices me
or ignores me.  When I am using the large SLR I get one chance to get the
shot before everyone looks at me and ruins the shot.  YMMV but the little
toy like M does not bring any wrath from mom but the SLR does.  The
exception would be when I use an Exacta Varex because it is just so wierd I
must be harmless.

Peace

Don
don.dory@gmail.com


On 12/18/06, Brian Reid <reid@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us> wrote:
>
>
> > I photograph all kinds of human subjects with an 85 1.2 on a 5D all  the
> time.  This is just silly.
>
> Me too. And yes, it is silly. But it is real.
>
> The 85/1.2 is pretty much on my Canon DSLR all of the time. Mostly what I
> shoot is studio portraits, and these days mostly I do it with the Canon and
> that lens.
>
> In a studio setup, they have come to my world and are sitting on my stools
> and blinking at my strobes and checking their hair in my mirrors and 
> worried
> whether their shoes are going to injure my backdrop, the camera is
> invisible.  It's just part of the whole studio setup.
>
> On location, where I am venturing into someone else's space, the camera is
> not invisible, and different people react in different ways. For the last
> few months I've taken more pictures of 5- and 6-year-old children than most
> other subjects, but never in my studio. It is with that group that I have
> noticed the reaction to the camera. They all know what it is, they can tell
> the difference between kinds of cameras. Every one of the children who
> talked knew that my camera was not a video camera, and
> that it was bigger than the kind they were used to seeing. Very few of
> them were afraid of it, but all of them were aware of it. I don't want the
> kids paying attention to the camera. I want them looking at me, or looking
> at the person that I usually ask to stand right behind me and look over my
> head while I crouch. Yes, I can get them to stop paying attention to the
> camera, but with kids that age you don't get a lot of their attention, and 
> I
> don't want to waste it on them looking at the camera.
>
> On those rare occasions when I charge for a sitting (usually I just charge
> for prints), people want to see big heavy cameras and big strobes and giant
> painted backdrops and all of the gear that I own that they don't, so they
> think they are getting their money's worth by paying for a sitting. I'm not
> famous enough to sell my name, and I don't do this full time, so I have to
> pay attention to what they think they're getting for their money.
>
> If I charge for a sitting and then seat them on a kitchen stool, use a
> couple of reflectors to bounce window light onto them, and shoot with a
> Leica CL I can get a magnificent portrait, but they'll think "My uncle Fred
> can do this, and he won't charge me." If I seat them on some Lastolite
> Posing Tubs in front of a painted muslin backdrop and some strobes with
> diffusers, and heft a big DSLR with a long lens hood, they respond very
> differently.
>
> I think my dentist does the same thing. He doesn't need or use half of the
> gear that he keeps in his office, but it's there to help me understand that
> my uncle Fred couldn't do this cheaper.
>
> I believe that this phenomenon of "gear as environment" is primarily a
> phenomenon of studio portrait work, but vestiges of it do show up in
> location posed portrait work.
>
> When I take pictures of my mother, I seat her near a window and use the M6
> and a couple of reflectors. And I don't charge.
>
> Brian Reid
>
>
>
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