[Leica] OT: world press winners 2006 (long rant)

[telyt at earthlink.net (Douglas Herr)]

on 2/12/06 6:40 AM, Douglas Herr at telyt@earthlink.net wrote:

> on 2/11/06 10:08 PM, Ted Grant at tedgrant@shaw.ca wrote:
> 
>>> Ted, my experience with sports mirrors yours with birds ;-) but for
>>> wildlife
>>> at least digital capture with fast frame rates has turned technique 
>>> upside
>>> down from where it was just a few years ago.  Standard practice is indeed
>>> to
>>> shoot a burst and pick a good one from the sequence later.<<<
>> 
>> Surely Doug these guys shooting at 8 frames a second aren't getting the
>> quality you do? While shooting one frame at a time? The first frame.
> 
> bingo!
> 

Let me expand on this quickie running-out-the-door response.

[RANT MODE ON]

IMHO there are many parallels between sports photography and wildlife
photography, and that as the equipment technology has evolved it has become
far easier for the average photographer, or I should say a team of average
photographers, to capture the "action" that is prized by editors; it used to
be that skill and timing were crucial but when you see at major sporting
events a 'shooting gallery' of several dozen big white lenses operated by
remote-controlled high frame rate camera bodies tethered to central editing
rooms one has to wonder how much skill is involved aside from knowing where
to point the camera.

Regarding the photo that started this discussion (diver stiking her head on
the diving platform), we don't know whether there was a 'shooting gallery'
or if this was the work of an individual.  If there was a shooting gallery
as described above, the odds are that one photo among the dozens made of
this particular dive would have captured the moment of impact.  If you were
to ask me what the chances are of any one photographer (or, any particular
camera) capturing that moment I'd tell you the odds were very low.  However,
in the aggregate the odds that the moment of impact would show up in the
editing room were pretty good.  It's almost like supplying an infinite
number of monkeys with an equally infinite number of word processors except
you've improved the odds by adding spell-check software to the word
processor.

Shooting galleries are found in wildlife photography too.  There are
numerous 'hot spots' and events that draw photographers shoulder to shoulder
with their big white lenses: La Jolla Cove about this time of year, a
roadside badger's den I saw in Yelowstone, Bosque del Apache National
Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico late in the year, Palo Alto Baylands or
Arrowhead Marsh during the winter new moon high tide.  Technically the
photos that result are good, but when you see the 'take' from the gallery
there's a 'same-ness' to them.  No one photo, or no single photographer's
photos, stand out from the rest.

Years ago wildlife photographers' holy grail was photographing birds in
flight.  AF, Better Beamers, Matrix-metered fill flash, fast frame rates and
vibration-reduction technologies have changed all that.  Now, nature
photography websites are abolutely full of these pictures, and after a while
they all look the same aside from the color or shape of the bird: a large
bird (easy to track, easy for the AF system to lock onto) centered on the AF
sensors, overhead with a plain blue sky (don't want to confuse the AF system
with a real background), evenly lit from beneath by the flash system (no
icky shadows) with a twinkle in the eye supplied by the flash.  The first
one was fantastic, the second and third and fourth were kewl but when you've
been inundeated by hundreds they're all BORING.  It's mass-production
photography just as interesting and challenging as the output from the
shooting galleries at sporting events.  The challenge has become acquiring
and programming the equipment.

Now before anyone gets his or her shorts in a knot about the 'big white
lens' remarks I'm not implying that automaton photography is all they're
good for.  There are plenty of reasons to choose any particular piece of
hardware but it seems like if you're going to do the shooting gallery thing,
the auto-everything camera is the one you use to get your pictures into the
editing room, and the more picures you supply, the better the odds are that
some of your photos will make it out of the editing computers.

[RANT MODE OFF]

So Ted what I've tried to say in a roundabout way is that in the past a
photo like the diver striking her head probably would have been the result
of a skilled and knowledgable photographer relying on instinct and timing
instead of fast frame rates, the game for the majority of sports photography
has changed: the odds of any one phographer capturing the moment of impact
were slim, but because of the huge number of photos being made of the event
the odds of someone getting the picture are pretty good.

Doug Herr
Birdman of Sacramento
http://www.wildlightphoto.com