Tuesday, February 19, 2008

gi•nor•mous…

ginormous - gi·nor·mous Pronunciation: \jī-ˈnȯr-məs\ Function: adjective, Etymology: gigantic + enormous, Date circa 1948 : extremely large : humongous


I have to say this describes the trees in Yosemite’s Mariposa Grove exactly. Over the long weekend my wife and I went back to Yosemite National Park. Mariposa Grove is one of 75 groves of the Giant Sequoia Trees. We hiked six miles in the snow, up hill both ways to the Giant Sequoias in Mariposa Grove, and to see the Grizzly Giant. The Grizzly Giant is the largest Sequoia in the Mariposa Grove. It is estimated to be over 3000 years old. According to the literature, the lower limbs of the Grizzly Giant are larger in girth than any other non-sequoia tree trunk in the Mariposa Grove. Ginormous...

We also went back to the valley floor. We had scheduled a walking photo tour early Saturday morning. The tour was hosted by a photography pro at the Ansel Adams Studio Gallery in the Yosemite Village.

The tour took about 2 hours. It is designed for all levels of photography. The guild showed us techniques of framing and depth of field etc... He also took the group to some of the places Ansel Adams took some of his famous pictures.

There were about twenty-five of us in the group, and the only person shooting on film was the guild. Some of his instruction was about film and darkroom processing. I noticed that 90% of the people on the tour had a strange blank look when he spoke about the use of film.

This is my take on film vs. digital photography:

Film – Film photographers are like snipers. One shot one kill. Film users require more technique and a higher level of skill to master. Since you have a limited amount of pictures per roll of film, you have to make sure your shot is almost perfect. Paying close attention to lighting, focus, exposure, framing, detail, depth of field, blah, blah, blah… You will never know what you really have until your film is processed, and in a roll of 36 Fuji Provia slide film, you might get one, one good kill. Film photography doesn’t make you lazy.

Digital – Digital photographers’ are like an infantry soldier. The grunt grabs his M16A4 riffle and sprays lead until he has to reload or gets tired. Just like the grunt a new digital photographer can shoot pictures until his digital media storage becomes full or he gets bored and or tired.

Even though most skilled photographers that switched to digital still use proper technique and discipline, for the most part we can get lazy. If we don’t like the picture the first time (delete) and shoot it until you get it right. We can shoot until the cows come home, and in a thousand images we will be happy if we get ten decent images.

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