As a refresher in between some personal development post I usually I write, I would like to share a story. Some weeks ago, I went to a short hike with group of friends. There were 6 of us, three girls and three boys. Almost all of us bring camera, from pocket camera to digital SLR camera (I counted out mobile phone camera in this case, although that some mobile phone can produce not so bad picture)
As myself, I brought my dad old camera, Nikkormat FT-3. It’s a manual film SLR camera. And my compact Canon Powershot camera. By the way, I’m not doing a camera review in this post too, I just a photography enthusiast. I don’t know when I pick up this “hobby”; I like to take picture, compose them in an unique angle, try to capture the beauty of it, especially I like to capture a candid expression of the people, like laughter, sadness or enthusiasm.
The walk that we had was about 1.5 hours maybe close to 2 hours. What I started to notice about people with camera is, they often busy to look for unique things so that they can take a great picture. I thought that was happened only to me. When I saw something unique, I started to take my camera out of my pocket and find the angle then take one or more shots. But this time, almost all of my friends did the same thing.
(Later I found out from another friend about KISS and FART technique in taking pictures. KISS – Keep It Simple Stupid and FART – Find Ask Refine and Take)
Flashing back to week earlier, my company was having a monthly birthday party at our office. As part of event committee in my office, I was responsible to take pictures. I was a new staff back then, but every time we had the events, I always brought my camera because I want to capture candid expression of my colleagues. Anyway, since then I joined the event committee and voluntarily choose to take pictures. And thanks to my friends whom have great narcissism and camera aware, they have lots of pictures of themselves.
Back to the hike. One of my friend whom use pocket camera told me, the reason he didn’t choose “big” dSLR camera was he want to be in the picture. By having pocket camera, he can easily ask people to take his picture instead of asking people to use dSLR. Well, to this extend I agree with him. But, I still find great accomplishment when I can capture the great expressions which are the most candid expression. Those expressions are priceless, because the people you shoot at can express themselves freely. That’s the main thing I like to have a dSLR camera. To capture the moment which is difficult to achieve using compact or pocket camera.
However, sometimes people with big cameras are too busy to take pictures. They can’t see the whole big picture, because they found the object and they focus on the object itself. They didn’t really enjoy the object itself, but merely see it as thousands of pixels from their camera. It’s like making a limited point of view from the whole object. This made me realize about two things.
First, it’s similar with our daily life. Most of the times when we are having troubles, we focus too much on the troubles. We didn’t see that troubles are there to teach us something. Instead of trying to learn something or to make something out of it, we complain and wail.
Second, we are too busy, sometimes, to appreciate what are things around us. We often see ourselves lack of something, we’re not better enough, we’re not rich enough, we’re not smart enough and many more. If we take out the picture frames, we can see more things outside the pixels, which we often miss out their beauty, about what we have, how abundance our life is.
So, capturing the best picture? I think the best picture is captured by our mind and felt by our mind. It’s more complex than just colors and pixels.
(PS: but I don’t oppose the idea to take pictures, recently some of my friend shares some old pictures from my university time, which I completely forgot about it, but looking at the pictures, reminds me of the old and sweet times)
