I think there may be more than a few of us who have been told that we spend too long looking through a viewfinder instead of experiencing life first hand. And there will be plenty of us who know that sometimes we don’t get to experience an event because we are constantly looking for the best angle and thinking photography rather than feeling the moment as everyone else is.
Filmmaker Casey Cavanaugh has made a really cool film on the subject, and has created a wooden rig that allowed him to mount his Sony a7S above the viewfinder of a Hasselblad 500CM so he could record the movie through the viewfinder of the medium format film camera. I won’t spoil the story for you, but it doesn’t end well for the Hasselblad! Cavanaugh also shared the main actress in the film, Corrina VanHamlin, tragically passed away after it was made.
Ops. I haven't read the description. Looks like the ending is the main idea of the whole video... In this case I don't like it. I thought the author wanted to say something more significant.
What? The dangers of expressing CREATIVITY through the lens, are you for real man? Get a life. You create your own photographic reality according to your beliefs. If you believe in such dangers, then that is what you create for yourself, you will unnecessarily wall your self in with photographic barriers while others creative intents flourish.
I don't like it. Doesn't make me feel good. Plus, it is completely unreal - only an idiot would allow that to happen. In normal life, and with normal functioning people you have to do all kinds of concessions to function. Alcoholics, gamblers, drug addicts and others are marginal. It seems to me that photography often gets overrated, and idealized. Often, if not mostly, it is just work.
I didn't read anything much before watching; only a few lines and that's it. From what I understood is that photographer lost a lover/soulmate because he didn't want to put the camera down. Apart from that, the movie is sentimental, and I don't prefer those. However, quality wise it is top-notch.
It is sentimental, yes. The story that he lost a friend BECAUSE he was too much obsessed with photography is just that: a silly story. It distracts from the actual film in my opinion.
If we would look at it critically, than you could separate different aspects of it, but that would be just like looking a technically perfect photograph that shows nothing. It all goes hand in hand, and only if you hit all the spots then you have a true value. I don't want to sound like an old geezer, but I watched so many cookie-cutter shorts, that I simply can't appreciate yet another done in the same way.
Great short film. From watching the film, I did not get the message of photo obsession dangers. Perhaps each viewer will get a different message from it.
Anyways, another awesome video posted by DPR.
Hope to see more like this and of course anything from Chris and Jordan.
Balance in all things. I use to have to “hide” behind the camera in order to have ANY social interactions. I’m better now. Ironic that in the end, at least he had photos of her ...
Each time I see my two litle grandkids, I take several hundred photos of each. No one complains, especially after I make a gorgeous 16x20-inch gallery-wrapped canvas print of each one from a perfectly posed, composed, framed, and exposed image out of the whole bunch. And since the kids have never seen me without a big, white 70-200mm f/2.8 lens on my camera, they are not even the tiniest bit camera shy.
Dot Com Editor - beware - the grandkids will get bored with it! My advice is to ease off on the number of times you photograph them (unless of course it's only rarely) because they will turn against it as they get a bit older. Jim
Through an optical viewfinder you always see the image in color. In the first minute of the movie the image through the viewfinder is seen in black and white. So at least that part was not filmed directly through the viewfinder.
To do anything to a high level, it has to be total obsession. Conor McGregor
Has ANYBODY traced the line or mental or physical limits to define the CLEAR frontiers between priorities, goals, mania, euphoria, delusion, and over activity? Because it seems to me that nowadays those are the words that guide, orient & dominate MOST of our daily, miserable lives, from dieting, to over achievement: NEVER having enough of ANY crap we figure is a great personal project, from Pablo Escobar to the guy who died trying to achieve his 500th parachute jump. On that note I unequivocally agree with ovengloves: "It's too easy to take too many photos these days."
Presumably, that's the phone he was using to talk to his friend at the beginning of the film. Though I'm not sure why they'd show the icons dancing - as if he was rearranging the apps just prior to putting it down.
These days it's not the time spent looking through the viewfinder but the time spent reviewing and editing the images on a PC that I get the most criticism for. It's too easy to take too many photos these days.
In the digital age (but in the film age as well) more images are and were captured that we could have done without, than images that are worthy of saving.
"Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." Winston Churchill
I get what you are saying. I do agree there's a trap of blind shooting we often fall into. Setting aside travel photos and those of personal sentiment and focusing on the artistic, the key is failing forward. If we are doing that then those "captured that we could have done without" have meaning and purpose. For those travel and personal sentiment types of photos, they are not ever regretted and perhaps say more about who we were than any of our artistic shots. Keep shooting, people. But do so mindfully.
BrightTiger: I just look at the numbers, and with my feeble mental capacities fail to 'see' how ten thousand photographs can all be interesting.
One of the great advantages of digital photography is that it allows one to 'bin' images ruthlessly; 'chimping's' only real use. I visited an exhibition once in FOAM, Amsterdam, of Magnum contact sheets. Fascinating to see how one image, or maybe two, gets selected out of a row of f.i. twenty, on one roll of film. Very instructive too, trying to follow the photographer's reasoning.
Absolutely correct. I get chills when camera manufacturers boast with frame-rates. Of course, those are useful, sometimes, but mostly you get mountain of junk using those.
Had to watch the video twice to understand the plot. The end of the video pretty much makes the earlier parts of the video more understandable how they are connected. Still not sure if I got the whole story right - but anyway, cool idea to film parts of life through the Hassy viewfinder (I shoot with a 500 C/M myself). Obviously a successful idea to stand out from the crowd and be awarded for it. Next is a clip with scenes taken through a large format camera and projected flipped on the matt glass?
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