Evolution of the Modern Day Photographer
June 22, 2011
Times they are a-changing.
Just a couple of weeks ago, Vincent Laforet shook up the world of photography when he posted this image, later revealing that it was merely a screen grab from an all natural light, 96 fps video shot with the new RED EPIC M digital cinema camera.
Some of you will ask: “Is this a GAME CHANGER?”
I’m going to stay away from that term. It’s been far too over used in the past few years anyway. I’m also going to stay away from making any claims or proclamations – but I will ask a few questions openly. What I CAN says is: this camera has made me think A LOT. And ask a lot of “big” questions… such as: “Does the challenge of capturing “THE DECISIVE MOMENT” still exist when you can capture a 14 megapixel image at 120 frames per second? ” For someone who idolized Henri Cartier Bresson and worked on mastering the capture of that “decisive moment” for most of my career – it is not a question I ask lightly.
Yesterday, Mountain View startup Lytro announced it’s revolutionary light-field camera which allows you to instantly change the focus of your photography in post-production. It has to be seen to be believed, simply unreal.
This means capturing that perfect shot of your fast-moving pet or squirming child could soon get a whole lot easier. Instead of having to manually focus or wait for autofocus to kick in and hopefully center on the right thing, pictures can be taken immediately and in rapid succession. Once the picture is on a computer or phone, the focus can be adjusted to center on any object in the image, also allowing for cool artsy shots where one shifts between a blurry foreground and sharp background and vice versa.
I think Vincent Laforet was even more prescient than he knew when he said in a recent interview with APhotoEditor:
Editing is going to become one of the most important, sought after skill sets in the next five to 10 years. I think we’re going to see such an incredible amount of data coming in, to the likes of which we’ve never seen before that editors are going to become one of the most important job positions out there.