It makes no difference if you take pictures just because you want to or you are simply taking a few shots for a friend. Perhaps you are a professional and get paid to take photographs. Not to be confused with getting paid for a picture you have taken. That makes you a Stock Photographer and opens up a whole other set of rules. No I am talking about anyone who picks up a picture taking device and captures an image with that device. If you are one of those types of people and going to take pictures you should follow the picture taking rules. Well rules number 1, 2, and 3 for sure.
Rule #1 is simply that you are in charge. Even if you are using your cell phone to get a shot of your drunken friends in a bar on Saturday night; it is up to you to stand in the right spot and hold the phone so that anyone, even you in the morning, knows the story behind why you took that picture. It is also your job to know about all the settings on whatever device you are using. You paid extra so your camera i.e. phone can zoom in and out. Don’t you think you should know how the zoom feature works? Bottom line you have the picture taking device in your hands, right? Does not this make you in charge?
Rule #2 after you have pushed that button on your picture taking device you are now in charge of getting the image from that device and putting it somewhere where you and others can see it. In my day, that would mean getting the film to the photo lab. With digital this means getting the image from the camera in to the computer. Once your image is in your computer you can then do, or have someone else do for you, everything I used to do at the photo lab. If you do not follow rule #2 there is no reason for you to follow rule #1 because nobody will ever see your pictures anyway.
To prove my point I want to show you a picture or two that was taken 68 years ago. Yes this lost camera story has been going around the internet and you may have already seen the pictures or heard the story. But what I want you to think about today is that you or anyone else would never have seen these pictures if someone today hadn’t follow rule #2 and rule #3. We’ll get to rule #3 in a minute. For now think about a sailor from the USS QUAPAW who 68 years ago took these pictures with his Brownie camera and then left that camera in the bottom of his footlocker. My point here is that you never know how important the pictures you take today may be to someone else at some future date. The attack on Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941 was my generations 9/11. I for glad whoever it was who found that camera had the good sense to follow rule #2.
Rule #3 you are in charge of getting the pictures you take to the people you were thinking about when you took the picture. Even if you only want to look at them yourself you still have to have a way to find them and look at them when you want to see them. You are also in charge of making sure that anyone else who may want to see or use the pictures that you took can do so without coming to your house to look at your computer screen. You have to know how to make your pictures available to those you want to see them in a useable format. If you do not follow rule #3 be sure to hide the fact you are taking pictures because someone at some pint is going to ask to see them or ask if they can get a copy of the shots you just took.
Now before you think that rule #2 and rule #3 is too hard to learn or get into, think again. You choose to take pictures in the first place, didn’t you? In my day there were a lot of photographers who only wanted to take pictures and did not want to mess with all that other stuff like rule #2 and rule #3. We simply had someone else do the work for us. That is why the photo labs were there. Computer photo labs are no different today. They will do the work for you if you can get the picture to them. This means you will have to do a little work after you take that picture. So remember, “The rules only say you are in charge of getting the work done,” they did not say you had to do it yourself.
Photography can be a fun hobby. I know first hand that it is a great profession. But didn’t someone somewhere say that anything worth doing is worth doing right? If you want the most out of your picture taking experience, you should experience all the rules and be in charge. Or just put your picture taking device in a footlocker and wait 68 years for someone else to do it for you.
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