Why Does Photography Matter?
In our modern world, everyone knows what photography is. We are inundated with photos every single day. For many of us, this is most likely on social media like Instagram or Facebook. Even when we aren’t glued to our phone screens, we still are exposed to photos in some shape or form. Just driving along the highway on the way to work presents us with many billboards trying to sell us something with some photographic imagery – you know, unless your’e living in a place like Iceland that doesn’t allow this sort of thing.
These are some of the more mediocre contacts we have with photography on a daily basis. That’s not to say that photos consumed on social media platforms, or off the side of a highway, lack value – it’s just that we don’t tend to attribute much to them because they are so frequently in our field of view. In short, we maybe take for granted our access to photography when they are like this…
So while photography might matter to the extent that it entertains us in short blips throughout the day, and might even be a nice catalyst for selling things to other people, it is in other ways that photography has the potential to matter in a way that makes a lasting impression.
The Lasting Impression of Photography
The photographs we care about are those that conjure up in us great memories, or serve our minds a heavy dose of fantasy, mystery, or the all allusive abstract concept of beauty made real.
Being married wedding photographers ourselves, we know all about the strong emotions a couple feels with one another, that they then bring along to their wedding day and beyond.
While our core job may be viewed by mom-and-dad as the people who “take pictures,” the truth is that – in our process – we continually strive to make real, human connections that enable us to help our couples bring out their emotional connection with one another in a setting that can, frankly, be uncomfortable for most. Be the center of attention, do this thing with one another, and let us grab some photos of you making out…
It’s sort of funny to think about the process, and we reflect on it all the time how we’re not the biggest fans of having our own photos taken – but we know the value of photography.
We look back on our own wedding day gallery from time to time, or in printed pictures we have up in our home and our corporate office cubicles. While many memories are trapped in our mind from our wedding day, further memories are hidden away and unlocked by viewing these images. In this way, memories become alive for us, and it is something special that can only be fully valued with time.
Photography as a fantasy that can become reality
While some photographs in particular can carry deep sentimental value, other photographs are meant for mass appeal. And what is more appealing to human beings than a fantasy?
Virtually everything we do and live for is oriented towards fulfilling some fantasy – even if our ability to fulfill is limited by the chains of reality.
Every time we eat out at a restaurant and salivate over food we didn’t need to prepare, go to a concert and gawk at the hard rockers and their passionate instrument playing and style, read a Harry Potter novel and not talk about He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named, or turn on HBO to catch the latest episode of Game of Thrones – we all want (and probably legitimately need) an escape.
For ourselves, photography has served our imaginations as we’ve explored over-and-over again many places around the world we wished to travel. It’s hard to believe there was a time when photos of these places didn’t exist, and the ability to transport ourselves from where we are on the planet to an entirely different place on the planet also was insufficient or non-existent.
To us, travel photography (and by extension: landscape photography) is a foundational art form that entices people like ourselves to step out of our comfort zone in more ways than one. Our big lure is to new and adventurous places that enable us to explore, hike, and immerse ourselves into different cultural experiences than what we are used too.
We felt this pretty heavily during our trip to Mexico in 2015, and watching each other trying to navigate conversations in the Spanish language was more laughable than anything, but within days we began to notice that even students who once failed high school Spanish classes could now begin to pick up on words and phrases when standing face-to-face with someone in a totally different place as this.
Next, our 10 day campervan trip around Iceland in 2016 revealed the solidarity and quietness of the Earth that we almost never get to witness for ourselves in any long stretch of time. While we live in a quiet suburban neighborhood, even with the doors closed and windows shut, we can still hear our neighbors, their dogs and kids, and the sound of lawns being cut in mid-July. These are the muted noises we have learned to block out, but the sound of actual and total silence, with only the rumbling of waves against fjords or the cracking glacier ice in our ears, is something to be treasured.
Many more experiences like this are to come, and continue to be brought to life before our eyes.
The Purpose of Photography for Us
While photography is this hugely expansive thing – the subject of our photographs tend to be fairly static, as they are the things we like to document.
For the longest time, we have always enjoyed photography of nature around us. Even just picture of some flowers or trees in our backyard. From these simple beginnings, we have found significant affection for more complex landscape photography. Tripping through Iceland with a camera bag strapped to our backs, we really found an environment like place that seems plucked out of Lord of the Rings to be the ideal grounds for capturing photos of nature in it’s rawest form. The combination of the images, environments, and experience and effort required to get certain photos ramps this up for us further.
While landscapes may be one of our favored types of photography (this is probably the introverts and adventuerers in us both calling out), we have set our focus as a business (Hand and Arrow Photography) to be oriented towards couples and weddings specifically. This passion grew out of our own affection for one another, and having witnessed the impact photography happened to have on us both during the process of having our wedding photographed and seeing the images that last for us to look back at that day again-and-again.
These days, as exhausting as wedding photography can be, the positive responses we have received to our work and the ever-growing attention we have received all end up being fuel in the fire for our artistic drive.
At the end of the day, whether shooting photos for couples in love, of nature for our own reflection, or some other thing – we aspire to simply document authenticity, and attribute to it a natural yet complex color profile in post-processing, only accentuating the emotions felt both by us as camera holders and those people or things in front of the lens. The rippling resonance of mountains, swaying limbs of the trees, and the way our couples stand together seriously or erupting in joyous laughter because these are their personalities…all contribute the living element that makes our photography a reality.
A Photographers’ Toolkit
With all this talk about why photography is important and valuable, and our sweet sentimental trips down memory lane, we wouldn’t want to leave our websites’ starting page resource without discussing some of the technical components of taking a great photograph.
Behind all the artistic and compositional skills a photographer needs to have is a technical skillset that is hugely important. With the advent of auto-shooting modes and the ability to take hundreds of shots consecutively on digital SLR cameras, it is easy enough for anyone to pick up a camera and take, at least, an okay photo. If the name of the game is just snapping a few photos of the family hanging out on July 4th, then maybe a limited technical understanding of a camera is needed.
However, working professional photographers require a technical understanding of the camera in order to consistently capture the best images possible for their clients. This means understanding all the camera’s components (camera body, lenses, flashes, etc.), and knowing how to properly utilize them as tools in the artistic process.
Sometimes, photographers over-emphasize the importance of gear – even drawing lines in the sand based on camera brands like Canon, Nikon, Sony, etc. While no doubt the debates over which camera equipment is “better,” the truth is that most camera bodies, lenses, etc. in similar price ranges have a tendency to be quite similar. Yes, there may be differences, but the resulting outputted images are not usually so different that it warrants making a huge deal.
The key thing for you, then, is to simply select equipment you are comfortable working with, and that will provide quality images to your clients.
Since starting our wedding photography business, we have invested around $50,000 into upgrading our camera bodies, purchasing necessary lenses, upgrading our flash setup, and investing in services to help make the business side of things smoother – both for ourselves and our clients. In all this, we opted to stick with Canon camera’s simply because it was a brand we’ve been using since the early days.
Our Gear (Simplified)
While we have other articles discussing our gear in more detail, for a simple point of reference of the equipment we use consistently in our shoots, we have put together a snippet of these items for your reference.
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Camera Bodies:
The camera bodies we use are well received and output high quality images. These are standard camera’s used by professionals in all industries of photography today.
Camera Lenses:
In general, we prioritize the purchase of prime lenses vs. kit or zoom lenses due to the extra stops of light we are able to take advantage of. Additionally, when shooting at low f-stops (wide open apertures), we are able to capture photos with a softer and more dream-like quality due to the depth of field produced. We maintain a good range of focal lengths due to the ever evolving needs of wedding day shooting.
Camera Flashes:
Initial flash setups involved Yongnuo and Canon speedlites – which are an effective combo for photographers on a budget.
Due to the needs of our wedding photography, we have upgraded to Profoto flashes (both on and off camera) as these provide better and more consistent outputted light, as well as a lot more user friendly interface and control.
Yongnuo YN600EX-RT II Speedlite
Canon 600-EX RT-II Speedlite
Profoto A1 Air-TTL Flash
Profoto B1X Air-TTL Flash
If you’d like to know more about the equipment and services we use that help us produce the best photographs possible & handle the business side of things more effectively, please check out our blog for consistent updates and our Resource page with a more comprehensive list of the things we use and recommend.
Final Thoughts
Photography is a seemingly simple subject with a lot of nuances. The reasons for why any one person may decide to pick up a camera and take pictures will range significantly. For ourselves, it is an artistic passion that evolved over the years since our childhoods, and in it’s current form it functions as an art form that we have discovered is appealing to other people to the extent that we consistently are booking new couples to shoot their wedding days.
The experience we bring to the table – both technical and artistic – is valuable. We hope you are able to find Formed in Light to be a useful resource for you to reference.
If you have any suggestions for content you’d like to see on our blog, please feel free to get in touch with us by filling out our Contact Form. We’d love to utilize your suggestions to help shape the future of our writings.