The Best Camera… Is The Nearest One To Hand by James Lightbown
Chase Jarvis has produced a wonderful book, iphone app & community based around the principle of “The Best Camera Is The One That’s With You” for which he uses his iPhone (http://bit.ly/9Wks2m). I have to agree. I love the iPhone, the camera in the 3G model and all the fantastic apps available for tinkering with your images. I love them so much that, although I’ve started this post by talking about the iPhone I’m actually going to save it for a bigger article at some point in the future, an article that I’m thinking might even develop into a bit of a bigger concept and project for the site.
So why did I mention all that? Well it’s about that title… “The Best Camera Is The One That’s With You.” For the purpose of this article I’d actually like alter it slightly and say “the best camera is the one that’s closest to hand.” I love the thought of accessible photography. The story (urban legend or not) of Terry Richardson going away to shoot a huge campaign and realising at the airport that they didn’t actually have any of their cameras with them so simply popped into duty free to stock up on disposables is marvellous and should be inspirational. As photographers we can sometimes get caught up too much in all the marketing nonsense of the biggest and best cameras that we must have. Until I upgraded this year, the only camera in my kit was an old Canon 20D and it was fine. If I client wanted me to shoot with something better then they rented whatever they wanted me to shoot on, if I wasn’t sure how to use it then we got a digital assistant too. A great image doesn’t start with the camera you’re using, it starts with you, your model, your team and your creativity as a group. The camera is simply a tool to help you capture that moment when the team has all come together perfectly. Different cameras will help you get different results. That’s why Terry Richardson can shoot campaigns with a disposable.
I’ve always liked this idea and a few years ago I wanted to try and push out of my comfort zone a little and see if I could produce a nice image from a truly awful camera. I ruled out polaroids, holgas, lomo’s, and disposables as they have such a distinctive style and there’s a lot of people out there already producing wonderful work on these cameras. No, I wanted something easily accessible but truly awful and virtually guaranteed to produce bad results. And so it was that I decided upon the Passport booth in Manchester’s Victoria Station. This wasn’t a digital booth it was an old school strip of four printed images with awful fixed lighting, an awful fixed lens and awful fixed focus that had been faithfully producing shocking pictures for years. I mean you can’t even control when the shutter goes off!
From a photography perspective I thought this was a really funky little challenge. Could I get good results from a camera I had no control over? If I was going to then I simply had to pay attention to the things I could control, the ambient settings in the booth and having a model who worked well with direction. I asked my then muse (now missus), Emma if she was up for the challenge and we set off to the booth armed with a kit bag full of bits of things to adapt the conditions inside the booth. Black and white paper from coloramas, wallpaper, tape, knife, scissors, and a pocket full of change.
I didn’t really see the need to ask a make-up artist to get involved in something so experimental and knew Emma could do her own make-up for a basic shoot. This was done in the car and when we got to the booth the first thing I wanted to do was trial the conditions. So with the booth left as you find it I ran through trialling the conditions. Emma’s instructions were to do the 4 shots, leaning forward, at an angle and actually shifting over to the side to gauge how much flexibility there was in the booth. £3.50 later and the answer was none! The focus was only in line with where you would normally sit and there wasn’t much scope for moving or posing.
For the next stage I went in and taped wallpaper on the back wall and because of the huge amount of light bouncing down from above I stuck matt black paper on the ceiling to deaden the bounce from above. Emma did a little hair change, simply clipping her hair back and we tried another few different poses. Another £3.50 and the results were much improved and getting closer to a nice image. There was more of an idea as to the posing constrictions. A touch more powder on the forehead to stop the remainder of the shine from the bright light and we were ready for proper direction! We talked about ‘a mood’ and how to sit when in there and then gradually tinkered with the pose for the next two runs through. Feeling that we had something quite good in the bag we experimented with Emma being knelt on the seat for the fifth run through and when they came out I felt that, though they hadn’t worked, there was an image that I could work with in post production from the previous two runs. Job done and only £17.50 spent in the booth!
I took all the stuff out of the booth (though it might have been more interesting to leave everything in there!) and headed for the lab and requested a high-res drum scan of the chosen image.
The scan came back with a lovely, soft, almost vintage feel to it from the printing process of the booth and I then spent quite a bit of time retouching the image, sorting out any skin imperfections, adjusting levels, contrast and saturation.
I was very pleased with the results and the potential of the idea from the initial test was apparent. So I went back again with another model, Sheree, to recreate the look again in the booth. I simply repeated the same process inside the booth and in post production, retouching the image and again achieving the lovely, soft vintage feel from the first test with Emma.
The fact that, for a while, both models had the final prints in their books makes me feel that the resulting images were of a good enough standard, however the learning experience of being able to produce a professional image from such a terrible piece of kit instilled a lot of confidence in me and was a thoroughly rewarding exercise, even when getting those funny looks on the concourse at Manchester Victoria!
Now there’s no way that I could write an article that mentions the terrible reputation of the dreaded passport booths without linking to one of the greatest adverts of all time!
