Everybody is a Photographer: The year of the Camera

  • By Vien
  • 16 February, 2015
  • Comments Off on Everybody is a Photographer: The year of the Camera

 

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Last year I decided to take a break from video and try to focus more shooting stills.  Trying to get my creative juice back and learning a different angle.  Someone wise once said, “If you want to be good at After Effect, you should get good at using Photoshop”.  So I learned everything I could in Photoshop to be efficient and until I was pleased with my photo and the outcome.  I really enjoy using Photoshop, now I can use it in conjunction with After Effects and understand layers a lot more.

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Shooting video is not always simply, but I have a passion for it.  Its starts with an idea and a little imagination, than putting it on a storyboard.  Picking location and putting it together with a shot list.  Playing with microphone/recorder and knowing that sound/audio is king. Smooth Cinematic movements with cranes and slider.  Knowing the rules of shutter angle.  Shooting everything in neutral style so your can color correct and then apply color grading for your final look.  Syncing sound later in post and then using After Effects to make your video stands out from the rest.  So much thought and planning, a lot of gear and so much time is put into it!  That’s filmmaking in a nutshell.

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Videographer and Photographer also have a lot in common.  In both camp you have to learn exposure, composition, color, cameras, fps, field of focus, etc…  In video you have to learn a little bit more and a lot of planning and finding talents.  Videography is like a team sport.  You need a sound guy, a couple of camera guy, actors, effects guy, light guy, etc… Everyone depends on one another to be successful.  Learning to cut video and adding effects by tracking motion and make it look good is harder than using Photoshop.  Trust me, I had so many long hours of video rendering just to find out you need to do it again differently.  Its more time-consuming than shooting stills.  Patients are the key to good, polish video.

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Photography is like individual sports.  I don’t need anyone to help me.  When I’m in the mood to shoot sports, all I have to do is pick up my camera and then go find a football, hockey, skateboarder, snowboarder, tennis, motocross, runner, etc…. Come home and throw the raw file into Photoshop and apply touch up and you’re done.  I get the satisfaction of seeing a project from the beginning to the end.  In video,  it can take months to find people/location to get involve and then months later just to finish editing.

Filmmaker shoulder rig Camera setup

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Conclusion:

When I am shooting still in an event or for someone, I get at least a dozen of people claiming to be a photographer or a least know another person who is.  I know why now… It’s the Year of the Camera!  Camera are so affordable these day, and you don’t even need the expensive Photoshop software when you can get something cheaper like lightroom.  Everybody and there brothers are a photographer!  The learning curve on shooting still compare to shooting video is so easy and fast.  My point is to every one-thousand photographer there’s one videographer, if I have to guess in the Utah area.  So when you are finding jobs as a photographer, good luck the market is saturated, unless you know someone.  I treasure my videographer skill and glad that this market is only the few the proud!  Knowing its a special skill set that set you apart from everyone with a camera.  Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy shooting still as much as I enjoy shooting a video project!

 

 

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