Liam has figured out how to multi-task by feeding the baby while playing on the computer at the same time. This image was made with a Canon G3 point and shoot and is part of a five-year experiment in learning to rethink how I make images.
For the past five years I have pretty much forced myself to re-learn how to make images using only a point and shoot camera.
I stored away my film cameras and moved to shooting pretty much exclusively with a digital sure shot for several reasons.
First and foremost, using a point and shoot camera has taught me to rethink how I make photographs. The process, for me, has become more conscious and deliberate.
As an experiment, the point and shoot, with its painfully slow delayed release, has made me slow down and consider every element in the frame. In the past, with the SLR, I could easy "spray" whatever I was looking at with a brust of frames.
Now every picture takes great patience.
A young girl waits for a Halloween Festival to begin in Ventura, Calif.
Curiously, as a teacher I have seen an increasing number of students interested in photojournalism come to class with an array of digital cameras, everything from top of the line digital single-lens reflect models to prosumer point and shoots.
For me, it is important to know how students experience what they see with tools they can afford. Ultimately, all students would be working with DSLRs and interchangeable lenses, but in many introduction courses it is impossible to expect a student exploring this field to drop a lot of money on cameras and lenses.
We learn to adjust and adapt to the tools we have.
Recently, I read a story on Rob Galbraith's Digital Photography website about how Alex Majoli of Magnum used point and shoot cameras to cover the war in Iraq. Majoli learned to adapt is style of picture-making to the smaller, less invasive cameras. In the article Eamon Hickey observes:
To be sure, doing effective photojournalism with point-and-shoot cameras requires some special techniques. Shutter delay is obstacle number one. Like the earliest digital SLR shooters who faced the same problem, Majoli has honed his anticipation skills and learned a new shutter timing rhythm, but he says he can't eliminate the problem entirely.
I am not sure the limitations of the smaller point and shoot cameras outweigh the benefits of the faster and bigger pro digital SLR cameras, but applying the aesthetics of photojournalism to the picture making process makes a world of difference.
In the end, photojournalism is still about relationships -- considering light, social responsibility and interaction with the people and places we photograph. At the same time, another very important relationship to consider is the photographer's relationship to the tools they use to make pictures.
My experiment with point and shoot cameras as taught to appreciate making images in many ways. I am now more conscious of making things seen through light, point of focus and the effective use of storytelling elements in the frame.