Cheap manufacturing and digital design tools make things like radio slaves and flashes accessible to the masses. Why pay a photographer to do that holiday card when for a bit more than the cost of a professional taking and printing the photos you can probably pick up an umbrella, stand, and remote flash and do it yourself.
Couple that flash with your current digital camera and now you can open the door to getting the digital images that you want out of life. Be your own artist.
Let’s erase bad photos from the Earth. Let’s put art where it belongs, in the hands of the people.
Even ten years ago this would have been nearly impossible for the normal folks. Things like expensive digital cameras and crazy expensive flashes meant that you had to know what you were doing. You still do of course, there’s no magic bullet (as the photo geeks say), but the divide between shit photo and Hollywood Lighting Master is now much reduced.
Now you can grab any point and shoot with manual control, use the flash to trigger the remote flashes, or pick up a cheap Chinese radio slave from eBay, and a half hour of fooling around later you have evenly exposed kick ass photos.
We actually have the ability to erraticate bad photography in our lifetime.
The digital laptop studio and the corner of your apartment translates into the ability to take cool photos of yourself or anyone you choose.
I like to go overboard, but the point is that now art and creativity are easier to express than at any time in history. The mediums are limitless and accessible to more people than ever before.
Hollywood Lighting Master? No, but I’m an engineer.
So what does this mean? What’s the gist? The gist is that you can easily create and enjoy art for yourself. The digital age means having the power – the tools to make the art instead of looking to professionals to complete your need for expression. If it’s not a multi-thousand dollar AD campaign, why not do it yourself?
I say embrace that freedom, erraticate harsh flash photos and embrace the clarity of the digital photo age.
It means allowing Artistic expression to reside in the hands of the un-artistically educated people of the World, not solely on museum walls and in expensive photo books.