Today Oliver Nielsen wrote an interesting comment on my Belly Dancers article.
Here is his full comment:
It’s a good article. I do think all you “strobist” people should focus a little more on making your images look less “strobist” ie. not like images obviously shot using a few speedlights.
You are killing your photography with this technofetish you all have for your speedlights. I have also recently bought a couple speedlights, to supplement my real strobe setup, but in the past I’ve shot many images without any flashes or modifiers at all. You can do a lot of stuff by working with the surrounding walls, available light etc. And not as a compromise, but as a huge contributing factor to MOOD. Emotions.
Essentially, what I’m getting at is that you “strobist” people seem to have no real vision or mission with your photography. A belly dancer lit and posed like seen here (and by Honl as well on Strobist.com and YouTube) is just plain¦ plain¦ Boring and plain. And the lighting is way too pronounced to be interesting.
I’m not writing this to diss anyone, but to suggest some direction for your photography. Being one in a million “strobists” will probably never get your stuff in a gallery, or change the world, or make you famous like famed Chase Jarvis. The difference? He has vision. And a lot of gear, but I assume he’s not obsessing with it. It’s just tools.
If you listen to, or read, The War Of Art by Steven Pressfield, you will note that being a strobist equals being an amateur. The pro does not worship his equipment.
Best cure? Buy some Rotovision or AVA books on pro lighting. With and without flash. Available light included. Learn to shoot and work with what you have. 3-point lighting is not the holy grail. It’s boring and dated. Hair light? Fill light? Not the stuff that made Terry Richardson, Avedon, Helmut Newton, etc…
Learn to shoot. Lighting can’t hide boredom! Not even poor lighting. Or perfect lighting.
I think – and this is an amateur’s opinion – he is right in that lighting on its own will not make a picture good. We definitely should not overuse lighting – it must be kept as a tool and its effects almost invisible for the viewer. And available light is also to be considered when framing a scene into composition. Light – in most of the cases – must not over-dominate on a photo.
And I can fully accept that he finds my belly dancer photos boring. The negative feedback is the one that can teach. However, I would be able to learn even more if he could have pointed to those aspects, techniques or whatever that could make my pictures better.
He wrote one thing that bothers me though.
…”strobist” people seem to have no real vision or mission…
It can be true if it’s only about me, since I am really only at the beginning of my journey in the world of photography. I do not have a genuine long term vision with my hobby, that’s true. But even I visualize the image consciously before setting up the lighting and taking the picture. I suppose it’s even more true in case of many other strobists.
I’m afraid Oliver’s comment is more general. It is a comment about those roughly 17000 thousands of strobists reading David Hobby’s blog, learning, practicing and discussing lighting techniques. Strobist is about lighting, that’s for sure. This is why people discuss this topic there.
But does that mean that we do not have a vision?
Are we – strobists – really techno-fetishists?
