Limits of little cameras

What happens when you photograph by looking at a TV screen instead of through a viewfinder? It is a novel means of interacting with the world, at least novel to me. Most people photographically engage this way now—holding their camera (or phone) at arm’s length and looking at the screen on the back. What I found immediately is that I simplified my compositions. I could see only the broad aspects of a potential photograph, and I recalibrated my seeing to fit the feedback I was getting.

What was neat, though, was how I could insert my camera into my surroundings. I can plunge it into bushes, place it on the table, or hold it over my head, and I can see what the camera is seeing. I can’t do this with an SLR. I take different photographs than I would have otherwise.

This is great for static environments, like landscapes, literal tabletops, or the undergrowth of my garden. At the Vancouver Folk Festival, where I typically photograph the dancing, I came up with a hard limit to engaging a dynamic environment with this toy of a camera. I’m too removed from what the camera is seeing. I’m looking at an already abstracted readout at arms length, not to what is in front of me.

With an SLR, I am fully in the frame. The outside world is, in some sense, walled away, and my visual environment is completely encased in this window afforded by the camera’s view. Even if I just glimpse the scene and respond to it in an instant, there is nothing between me and my response. For that moment, I’m not seeing anything else.

With the LCD readout on a consumer digital, I can’t subsume my awareness to the photographic process so neatly. In a highly dynamic situation, like the dancing at the edge of the stage, the best I could manage was a vague sense of what the screen told me, far away from where I was (the other end of that arm), and hope that I could open the process to accident instead. The pictures are all uncomposed messes.

I was so disillusioned that I went back to my room and got a real camera. I shot the rest of the evening with it, and felt much more connected. When I photograph stuff like this, I am responding from an even deeper place than I usually work from. It’s why I challenge myself regularly this way. There is so much going on that I cannot hope to follow it in any way that my conscious brain can keep up with. I sense where I need to be, and maybe establish the outlines of a composition. I connect with the energy of the people around me. When I’m actually taking pictures I have no idea that this or that image is what I’m after. I’m only acting in response to an internal sensation of the moment. Because so much is happening around me, it’s way beyond the ability of my conscious mind to track. I get to operate from that deeper place where the important photographic work happens.

I’m uncertain if this is possible with a digital toy camera.

Comments

[auspicious]

Olympus E-330. Live view. Best (or worst...) of both worlds.

[Geoff]

Doug,

Interesting to read about your evolving relationship with the little autocamera.

Saw your show at Cafe Lulu this a.m. Could that be the first time I've seen your work in public? The photos look great (especially in that environment, for reasons I can't articulate).

Visited with Elly yesterday, between house wiring events. My hands are getting strong while the rest of me gets weak. Need to get out and exercise more...

[Adam Yap]

I guess the question is, is it little toy cameras which are the problem or the lack of an optical viewfinder?

I definitely find that my mind works in a completely different way depending on whether I am looking thriugh a viewfinder or a little LCD screen.