Before the show last Friday, James asked me if I was prepared for questions I would get at the show. I said – ummm I don’t know. Can’t I just say whatever I feel like ? He rolled his eyes at me and said What if someone came up to you and told you “I don’t think photography is art”? I am pleased to say that no one said anything quite that rude to me. This is the only awkward  conversation I had that night -

A girl was standing in front of my picture “As long as the raven flies”. So, we introduced ourselves to each other.

Her – “What shutter speed was this shot at ?”

Me – “Something high to freeze the motion in my hair”

Her – “Ya, do you know what it was?”

Now, I had 9 pictures framed and multiple unframed prints. I do not remember the technical details of how I shoot every picture. I shoot my pictures in manual mode. I take a couple of test shots to make sure I like the exposure. To me, the composition/story is more important that technical aspects of how a picture is shot. But, I didn’t mind the question. So, I said ..

Me – “maybe 150 or 200? I don’t exactly remember. Are you a photographer?”

Her – “Yeah, but I shoot film. I tried digital 5 years ago but it is too easy. So, I haven’t used digital since then”. Then she went on to tell me something more along those lines, by which time I had stopped listening to her. Then, I politely excused myself and moved on to talk to some other nice people at the show.

Initially I was very put off by her comment. I mean, she just slighted my entire work process – something I put a lot of time and effort into. But then it got me thinking. When people think of  photography, they don’t think of what goes on behind the scenes or what it took to make a picture work. Most people think of the camera they have at home and then wonder how hard can it really be to point it at something and shoot? Even some professional photographers who came to the show were not too familiar with conceptual photography. So, here is what goes on behind the scenes at one of my photo shoots -

The raven for example took me 2 weeks from the time I thought of the concept, to actually getting everything I needed to make it work. I had to find a fabric that would work as wings in this picture. I went to 5 different stores to find out if they had black fabric. No luck. Then, I asked all my friends in town if they had one. I got lucky. One friend did! Then came the photo shoot on a cold day when it was actually snowing outside. I ran back and forth from the camera(it was a self-portrait) for an hour before I finally got the shots I needed. By the end of it all,I was so cold, I couldn’t feel my fingers. This picture is also not a single shot. It is a composite of multiple shots. Almost all my pictures are. Every piece in the picture is exactly where i want it to be. The hands are invisible in the picture because I added extra fabric onto them to remove the existence of the hand. Something as small as the skin in my hand showing through in my opinion would have ruined this picture. The cloth had to be edited in the picture to make it look like it was a part of the dress.( I don’t have great sewing skills, though i really wish i did )

Shooting with film I agree requires mastery of the technical aspects of the camera. If you enjoy that as a challenge, great, go for it. When i shoot with my holga, I find myself more carefully framing my shot because i don’t have the option of looking at the results immediately. I get one shot and that’s it. Film would never give me the freedom that digital does in terms of how far I can take it with post processing. To me, photography is but a medium to express what I want. I don’t find the technical aspects of a camera as interesting. I don’t care about apertures, ISO’s or shutter speeds. I know what they are, I know how to use them and beyond that, it doesn’t matter to me. If the picture tells a great story, does the value of it decrease if the photographer shot it in manual/auto, digital/film ? Why is this even important? Why is it that when it comes to photography alone, it is almost always about the medium and not about the end result? Why is it about Canon/Nikon or what model in Canon/Nikon? We don’t walk up to a painter and say “Do you paint with Reeves or Liquitex?” I don’t mean to say that you should never ask these questions. If you are genuinely interested in learning more about photography, by all means ask all these questions and more. Just this Sunday, I was asking an amazing underwater photographer about how and what she uses to photograph deep-sea life. But judging someone’s work by the gear they use is in my opinion, very silly (to put it mildly).