10 May 2009



We are currently planning a ten day photographic trip to Mount Cook/Aoraki (one of my favourite places to shoot in New Zealand) at the end of the month.  I was looking through our existing catalogue of images and came across this shot that Sarah made last year.  It is a photograph that I love because visually it is more than a pretty picture - it is a story, one that connects with my subliminal and says tranquility.  This is even more impressive given that I know the back-story.

You see behind the camera were our two toddlers, Jack (2) and India (9 months).  Jack is a juggernaut, an unstoppable force of nature who spent the duration of this shoot trying to drown himself in the canal or redistribute the contents of our camera bag around the parking lot.  Indi meanwhile was angry - really, really angry - which, given that it was about 5:30pm, 4º C and she had cooped been in an SUV for 4 hours, was fairly understandable.  When Indi is angry she screams - not just a nagging baby grizzle - I am talking the type of scream that will silence an entire supermarket aisle. As one of our friends put it "your kids pack more decibels per kilogram than anything I have ever heard" and he's a Pediatrician.  

So the audio to this particular capture was somewhat less than shangri-la compliant, in fact it was probably the most stressful nature shoot I have been involved with.

Which brings me to my point - as photographers it is not what you put in your shot, so much as what you take out, that counts.

As photographers Sarah & I are always editing, editing, editing - we edit light, we edit locations, we edit subject matter, we edit the time of day that we choose to shoot in, we edit out crud shots, we edit out bad exposures of good compositions, we edit out annoying immovable elements.  In-fact the whole process of bringing a shot to fruition is really just one big decision making chain, along which we edit out the things that stand between us and the next great shot that the universe offers up to us.  

But don't forget that editing is not solely a subtractive process, it is also crucial to be thinking additively, as Sarah did for this shot.    You see, her initial shots were somewhat devoid of a dynamic element, the sky was perfectly clear, the reflection near mirror and the light relatively unimpressive, in short it was a beautiful but static scene.  So, to Indi's chagrin, she persevered and introduced the ripples (by throwing a stone) to ultimately create an image that, after all the adding and subtraction was complete, delivered a total visual impact far greater than the sum of the parts.

So next time you've convinced yourself that you require a new camera body or lens to get 'that' shot, grab your existing rig and head outside to flex those editing muscles, it will be a far greater investment in your photographic future.

T