Let's Make Photography Great Again!

One of the key things that has changed with photographing since the introduction of digital-photography that has taken hold - is the ease of getting an image out-of the camera. People with an 'eye' can look at their on-trend mood-board and copy a shot. Or at least try to copy a shot and still get some kind of facsimile. This ease of "you press the button the camera does the rest" you just didn't see how far did you KODAK; has lead to a lot more people making pictures. Or perhaps to split hairs - taking pictures - as the end product, the picture is immediately visible.

But this mood-board - copyist approach to photography has left out a very important part of what makes a picture work in the first place.

The IDEA!

The idea that becomes the concept that needs thinking about. Then the right collection of people and fashion brought together to pull it off. And mostly that idea can ONLY be fully realised because you have brought the right team together - it, the picture becomes a gestalt - where the image itself becomes greater than the sum of all the skills of all the individuals who have put it together. Think of those ICONIC images! Yes we mostly think of the photographers eye and timing - but.. and especially with fashion. What if the stylists choice of outfit was changed, the model, the make-up artist, the hair? Even the assistants are part of a well orchestrated machine of thought and ideas and actions. Swap out this or that and you will not have that same picture.

ICONIC images! The likes of which have never been seen before. Pictures a generation remembers and keeps remembering!!!

This is something that is I think essentially impossible to achieve with the 'new regime' of mood-board as starting point - facsimile the final position. These pictures will have no soul. And there are luscious, strange ironies when it comes to fashion photography done in a way that begins with an idea that becomes a concept brought to life. Even though a fashion picture is a real-photo, fashion should always be a fantasy which is something that is not quite real at all. When that fashion picture is based on an original idea and well made with a great team. That fashion picture, that fantasy holds something unique inside that is real: and that's something that a copy of a fantasy can never have.

And you know what. I think most people just don't care, have forgotten that great pictures can still be made. Have become so; so used to the quick flick of instagram and copy-copy-copy - as an original idea - they have forgotten that great images can be made and they go beyond, far beyond their initial purpose of creation - and go on being remembered. For a very long time. Come on, I haven't given up; let's kick some goals, let's take our time back; our ideas back; let's get it together and let's make photography great again!

More of my thoughts on photography here -

Mood Boards; that White-Gold Blue-Black Dress Mood boards, you are probably doing it wrong.

The Stove might be Terrific but it won't deliver Fantastic Pictures. Why it's the photographer not the camera.

Why this Photographer Closed his Instagram Accounts All still valid though I do have one again..

Want to see some ICONIC Fashion Photos? Here's Goggles take - Iconic Fashion Photographs

Telling Stories in Pictures all over the world..

Kent Johnson, Sydney, Australia.

0433 796 863

kent@artcommunication.com.au

www.kentjohnsonphotography.com.au

www.fashionphotographysydney.blogspot.com/

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