Sometimes, people who want to take photos like mine ask what setting they should use to do so. I'm always happy to answer. But when I start talking about aperture, shutter speed and ISO and how they impact exposure, they often look at me as if I'm speaking a foreign language.
Only recently I realized what they were really asking was, "To what icon should I turn the dial so my camera will take that photo?" That, unfortunately, I can't answer.
When I showed up for my second day of photojournalism class, I thanked my professor, Rus Elder, for allowing me in the class and reiterated that I had my own camera so I wouldn't need the school's equipment.
"You won't be using that," he said. We walked back to the lab where he handed me a 20- to 30-year-old Yashica twin lens reflex camera."This is what we use in this class."
I wasn't a camera expert, but a quick glance told me this camera was the technological inferior to mine by at least a couple generations. I didn't understand.
Patiently, Rus explained, "Because this camera does nothing by itself, you will learn to do everything." And I did.
The value of learning to set everything myself was, when I went back to using my camera with automatic settings, I knew what the camera was doing. And if it wasn't doing what I wanted, I knew how to make it do something else.
So I don't know portrait mode from landscape mode from sports mode on today's cameras. But I do know how to control a camera to capture the shot I'm after. I'm always happy to share that information and it's not terribly complicated, but it isn't as simple as turning a dial.
Whenever I'm asked for camera advice by someone who wants to learn photography, my answer is, "buy one that has the option to turn all of the bells and whistles off."
That was the first lesson I learned from Rus, and perhaps the most important.
