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your shoulder with a jacket worn on top of it. The camera could not slip off, was completely
hidden from view, yet it could be slipped out for a quick series of shots and then was tucked away
out of sight before the subjects knew you had been photographing.
It is true that the flat Leica-type of camera allowed a greater degree of concealment
compared to the bulky slr-type. In practice the more visible slr does not seem as much
CAMERAS, SHOES AND OTHER ESSENTIALS " 67
of a liability as I would have thought. Perhaps because the camera is so ubiquitous at
most of the events I photograph &
More important than the choice of camera is the ease and fluency with which you use it. A
good exercise is to sit in a cafe and observe the other patrons. Imagine your eye could be
disembodied and float around in space. In a perfect world, where would you position
this eye in space for the ideal arrangement of shapes? Then blink at the exact moment
when the flux of motion congeals into a perfect picture. This is excellent training and
can be practiced in many situations. But you soon discover, if you actually attempted
these pictures with a camera at your face, then the power of observation is diminished
and that fine details, tiny moments are more difficult to observe. The viewfinder gets
in the way.
You can overcome this problem, to some degree, by experience, by shooting a lot of
pictures. You learn how to judge the exact field of view of the lens so that you move
instinctively into the right distance from the subject and you learn how to operate the
camera s controls without conscious thought. All the technical decisions in photography
should be so thoughtless that the act of shooting pictures is solely concentrated on the
image in the viewfinder.
Which takes a great deal of practice &
Of course. You do not attend a concert and expect the pianist to search for the correct keys!
There has been so much practice prior to the performance that hitting the right notes is
instinctive. Believe me, that s a lot, lot more difficult than setting a camera s controls.
You can learn all you need to know about the technical side of photography in three
days, but it takes constant practice to make it so instinctive that you are in the right
position, at the right moment, with the right exposure and focus, without any thought
about equipment or technique.
We are photographers. The question one must ask oneself is, am I translating what I
see in visual terms as well as is possible? In other words, to be able to communicate the
communicator must know his craft, both technical and organizational. These are the
mechanisms that help him communicate clearly. The photographer who works so clumsily
at what he is trying to say that he cannot get it said, however sincere he may be, is at best
still an apprentice; at worst, I am afraid, a fraud. There is a constant cry for the new. Some
complain of the same old subject matter. They see the answer as a new style or a change of
equipment: a bigger flash, a faster motor. History shows us that it is the visually simple that
lasts, and that the simple always appears to have an ease of execution. I say appears as I
am sure that apparent ease is the most difficult of all things to achieve.
It reminds me of a remark by Josef Koudelka who was shooting pictures around my cabin.
I couldn t understand what he was seeing, as the images seemed to have no connection
with his known work. He said: I have to shoot three cassettes of fi lm a day, even when not
photographing, in order to keep the eye in practice. That made sense. An athlete has to train
every day although the actual event occurs only occasionally.
68 " ON BEING A PHOTOGRAPHER: BILL JAY & DAVID HURN
What we are talking about is a special level of commitment. Most photographers do not
have it. That s fine. They can still enjoy the thrill of hunting down and snatching pictures.
It is a rewarding, satisfying hobby. I include people who are quasi-professionals. But
photography is no different from any other profession. In order to operate at the very
highest levels, it demands dedicated effort, tenacity and time.
We all know of what I call the talk-caring photographers who are always involved
working on an indefinable, never-finished project and who produce pictures that have
no definable purpose.
The I want to do it, inspirational phase of creativeness must be joined with the tough,
rational working out and development of the inspiration. The latter relies on plain hard
work. Many of us have awoken in the middle of the night with a flash of inspiration about
some book we would like to write. But the difference between the inspiration and the final
product is, in a paraphrase of Dostoevsky:
an awful lot of hard work,
an awful lot of discipline,
an awful lot of training,
an awful lot of finger exercises, and a lot of throwing away of first drafts.
When I was photographing Graham Greene, whom I have already mentioned, he would
write every morning, and then throw it away in the afternoon. He was not writing for a
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