Back in September 2013, Brooke Shaden’s presented a side-by-side comparison of the same shot done with two cameras: a Canon Powershot S95 and a Canon 5d Mark: http://shadenproductions.com/blog/2013/09/28/point-shoot-vs-dslr/ The post was quickly re-posted and re-tweeted and attracted a lot of commentary. On one hand, it was a great reminder that photography is about vision and imagination, not the fetishization of the latest gear, and that part of the challenge of being creative is making do with the tools at your disposal. However, many who responded made the equally valid point that Shaden’s aesthetic happened to be suited to the limits of of a point-and-shoot camera, as it does not require high ISO or extraordinarily shallow DOF. She also shoots with natural light and so doesn’t need to consider how her camera interacts with Speedlights or strobes. If you want to create images like Lithium Picnic. or something like this by Jonathan Menga (Mengahttp://www.jonathanmenga.com/bts-forest-photoshoot/) or (one of Shaden’s inspirations) Gregory Crewdson (http://art.yale.edu/GregoryCrewdson) , you will need to make a sizeable investment in equipment. Elsewhere (http://thecandidframe.com/, #175), Shaden has mentioned that she incorporates several photos into one of her images, in order to create large files suitable for large-format printing – something a 5d can obviously do better than a Powershot. . So even for Shaden, whose work is primarily created these days for brick and mortar gallery walls, the 5d is pretty much required. However, six months after Shaden first posted the article, what strikes me is the ingenuity of her post; the fact that she was able to bring focus to a conversation about creativity and camera gear that generated constructive discussion and clarity. Her post inspired image-makers while also bringing forth some sobering observations about what it takes to create certain types of ultra-contemporary photos. This is one of the (many) things that I admire about Brooke: that her ideas – expressed in image or word – always seem to keep the conversation about photography going in an interesting direction.
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