The Beginner Photography Podcast

512: David duChemin: Camera Craft and Creativity: Light Space Time

• Raymond Hatfield

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In this episode of the podcast, I chat with David duChemin, a humanitarian photographer who emphasizes the importance of mastering the creative aspects of photography. David encourages us to move beyond technical perfection, focusing instead on telling compelling stories through images.

THE BIG IDEAS

  • Focus on Fundamentals: Mastering the basics of exposure, composition, and manual controls will elevate your creative expression.
  • Creativity Over Technicality: Prioritize storytelling and emotional impact over perfect technical execution to create compelling images.
  • Explore and Experiment: Regularly experiment with different settings and compositions to discover what works best for your creative vision.
  • Embrace Constraints: Utilize restrictions, like shooting with one lens, to sharpen your focus on composition, light, and color.

PHOTOGRAPHY ACTION PLAN

  1. Practice Manual Controls: Switch your camera to manual mode and experiment with different settings to understand how aperture, shutter speed, and ISO interact. Set up a series of test shots adjusting only one setting at a time, taking notes on how each adjustment affects the final image.
  2. Explore Exposure Creativity: Experiment with different combinations of aperture and shutter speed while maintaining the same exposure to see how they change the aesthetic of the image. Use exposure compensation in aperture priority mode to control the brightness of your photos creatively.
  3. Experiment with Composition: Dedicate a day to shooting the same subject from multiple angles, distances, and perspectives to understand the impact of composition. Apply the rule of thirds, leading lines, and framing techniques to your shots, comparing the results.
  4. Embrace Constraints: Challenge yourself to shoot exclusively with one lens or your smartphone for a week, focusing entirely on composition and lighting. Choose a single location and spend an extended period capturing its various features, moods, and stories.
  5. Reflect and Adjust: After each photo session, review your images and identify which ones best tell the story or evoke the intended emotion. Keep a journal of your photographic experiments, noting what worked, what didn’t, and how you felt during the process.

RESOURCES:
Visit David duChemin's Website - https://davidduchemin.com/
Follow David duChemin on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/davidduchemin/

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Thanks for listening & keep shooting!

David duChemin:

Sometimes a photograph is good because of what it represents. It represents that you took a risk. It represents that you finally nailed compositional principle. It represents a step forward to you. And so in that sense, It is an important photograph for you. Is it good in the sense that someone else will find it compelling? Maybe not, but no matter how good that picture is, there will be people that say, no pictures. No, not good. We see what we want to see. There's an element in the photography world that is very concerned with getting it right, getting it sharp, getting it well exposed and never goes beyond that.

Raymond Hatfield:

Hey, welcome to the beginner photography podcast. I'm your host, Raymond Hatfield. And today we're chatting with wildlife and nature conservation photographer, David Duchemin about the fundamentals of both the technical side of photography as well as the creative side. But first the beginner photography podcast is brought to you by cloud spot where cloud spot, you can impress your clients with a beautiful gallery. That is easy to view, share, and download on any device. Not every gallery software can say that. You can control your image size at a watermark and set download limits as well. So what are you waiting for? Grab your free forever account over at deliverphotos. com and only upgrade when you are ready. You may have heard the name David Duchemin before, if not, you know, from one of his many extremely popular, books on photography, including some of my favorites, such as the heart of the photograph and the visual toolbox. But you may have heard me reference him many times here on the podcast itself. His ideas about photography, I think perfectly match mine. The goal of this podcast is to teach you that a great photo is so much more than the sum of its settings and the gear that you use. We live in this time in this space of gear reviews and being so obsessed over the gear when we've been creating amazing, incredible emotion filled images. For more than a century, believe it or not, some of those earliest cameras had no autofocus, no variable ISO control. These were just boxes that just captured light. That was at the end. So we know that we can create incredible, again, emotion filled images with any camera that we have. David is not only an incredible educator, but he's also just really incredible with his words. So today, David is going to simplify your approach for creating meaningful images by helping you to express your unique vision. This episode, everything that David shares is a perfect balance of the technical and the creative. So I really hope that you have a pen and paper ready because you are going to need it. So with that, let's go ahead and get on into today's interview with David Duchemin. David my first question for you is When did you know that photography was first going to play an important role in your life?

David duChemin:

it's funny. I was thinking about that this morning because I mean, the minute I picked up a camera, something made sense to me. the camera, God knows the camera didn't. But, you know, when I started to like, to see the world through that, the constraints of the viewfinder. I just knew it was my medium, like music didn't really work with me. I do terrible things to my guitar. It's just not, it's not good. and everything I tried in the arts, you know, I was very artistic, but it never resonated the way the camera did for me too. I guess because it's experiential because I could take it out into the woods. I could take it into the places I enjoyed. and so I knew it, like it made sense. It was just my medium, but it wasn't until like, I don't know, probably almost 20 years ago when I knew it would be a part of my future. it was always a part of my present, but just kind of as a, but I went to Haiti and I had been asked, it's a long story, but I had been asked to go to Haiti. And just before I left the organization I was going with said, Oh, we found some of your photography online. Could you shoot for us? I was a standup comic at the time I was doing comedy for 12 years. And so I brought my cameras and the minute I got to Haiti and made the first couple of photographs, I realized this is what I want to do, for the next chapter of my life. However, that is long, that is. because I knew I'd spent all that time learning how to use a camera, but I never really knew what I was learning to use it for. I never knew what kind of stories I wanted to tell. I was just, I would really was just making pictures for my own benefit, which is great. but that moment when I started making pictures in Haiti and I realized there are bigger stories that I, I wanted to tell. And I went home and I, Quit comedy. I stepped off the stage for the last time and started a career as a humanitarian photographer. And that was kind of the, end of the beginning or the beginning of the end, for me. And, I haven't put my cameras down since.

Raymond Hatfield:

What was it about those photos like you said that you were excited to tell a bigger story But like what does that mean maybe for listeners who are still just trying to figure out the technical of photography What does that mean to tell a bigger

David duChemin:

Well, I mean, every time we make a photograph, we make a photograph that is of something, right? There's stuff in the frame, trees, mountains, whatever. but a photograph can be a lot more than that. A photograph can be about something, an idea or, a story. And in this case, I think as I look back, I had a lot of photographs that were of things, stuff in the natural world and lots of birds and ducks far away and all that kind of stuff. That was the first time when I felt like I was, making photographs that were about something that served a greater purpose. And, that doesn't mean you have to become a humanitarian photographer or conservation photographer. I think just shooting for yourself, making photographs that move you and challenge you. I think those are, are also made for a greater purpose, but I really finally understood it. And when you understand what your pictures are about, and in my case, the humanitarian stuff, it was about making photographs of people in impoverished conditions, but showing the hope. My photographs were about hope, and I marketed myself to clients on the premise that I made photographs about hope. I didn't make photographs of children with flies around their eyes and distended bellies, because we've been seeing those. In humanitarian circles for 50 years and nothing has changed. We're still seeing pictures like that. I wanted to show the hope I want to show the change. And there was just something about knowing what my pictures were about that made it easier to make more compelling photographs. If you know what a picture is about, you know, what you, you need to include, you know, what you can exclude, You know, what kind of depth of field you need, you have a fuller sense of the possibilities and what kind of lens and how close and which moment and the kind of light when you know what the pictures are about, or you have a suspicion of that, you have direction and that's when it all became much more. I don't want to say serious, but, it was more serious. And suddenly it was like, okay, I can, I've learned to you. I'm a camera user have all have been a camera user since I was Now I'm making photographs that have as their end game, the human experience of viewing them and responding to them and feeling something about them. So it wasn't even the photographs. It was the experience of making them that something fundamentally changed. And I went, okay. Okay. All right. now I've kind of, I've graduated a little bit and I'm on to a different game. the game is no longer just about learning to use the camera, which is important, but it's insufficient. there are bigger things that are possible in terms of photographs that we respond to as human beings.

Raymond Hatfield:

when you look back at, say, those photos that you took when you were 14, when you look at them with your eyes today, do you still see the hope, were you still trying to capture hope, or is that something that developed over time because of subject matter?

David duChemin:

no, again, that that part changed when I was, I mean, I was about 30 years old and, in Haiti, figuring this out for the first time was kind of an epiphany. But when I look back, I do see similarities in the photographs I made. I see a simplicity of composition. I see a desire to kind of get to the point of the whole thing quickly. I see a desire to kind of not necessarily play by the rules. there's this quote by Picasso that says, you know, you first, you got to learn the rules, then you can break them. And I'm like, there's not even any rules. There are principles. There are principles that say a rule says, do this or else principles say, if you do this, the following will result. So if you use a slower shutter speed, the motion will be rendered in a certain way, whether that's motion of the subject or motion of the camera, if you use, a wider aperture, the focus will be narrower and the following things will happen. You understand. The tools and the language, I think photography can be more about language than it is about rules. And I think when I look back, I was very excited to experiment with what, my latest books called light, space, and time. And I was very excited to experiment how the camera could interpret light, space, and time because the camera sees those three raw materials in a way that our human eye just doesn't see it. We are incapable of seeing a scene at. You know, F 1. 2, and 85 millimeters. We're incapable of seeing a scene at, a half a second. We capture motion in a different, way. And in that sense, we see time differently light. It's impossible for me to, stop down my eyes, by five stops And see a scene only exposed for highlights and let the shadows go dark. The camera can do some amazing things. and so I guess it's a difference between, being very literal with your camera and making it see what you see, in which case it's very limited. or adjusting your own thinking and going, okay, but how can the camera see this? How can the camera render light space and time in a way that I couldn't and therefore express even more about a given scene or, you know, experience that, that I'm photographing. So that, I think that's the commonality.

Raymond Hatfield:

That takes time, right? And as we know, the audience here, a lot of them are beginners. It's the beginner photography podcast. and sometimes I hear photographers ask me like, they say that they want to learn photography, but what they really are trying to learn in the beginning is just the technicals of how to use a camera. We haven't even got to the photography part of it yet. And the seeing the light space and time and figuring out how you can, manipulate these and use these in an image may feel like a very advanced concept to some listeners. but it also sounds very technical, but having the experience, I know that it can also be very, personal as well. So can maybe you give me an example of how you would use that information? To be able to capture more compelling stories.

David duChemin:

First of all, you're absolutely right. I mean, these, it's not advanced. It's actually fundamental. It's just, you know, to use an analogy, it's like painters, painters spending all their time learning to use their paintbrush. Well, they do, but they also better be learning about color harmonies. They also better be learning about all the other things that are part of their craft. And as photographers, unfortunately, very often it gets reduced to painting. Just learning how to use the camera, which I will give you, I mean, the stuff I talk about now, I look back and go, yeah, I, I didn't know any of this or like, it's taken me years to figure it out but probably it's been accelerated by the fact that I teach and I'm passionate about teaching. And when you teach you yourself learn and you find words to concepts and that sort of thing. So for those of you that are listening that are early. Yes, absolutely. You need to learn to use your camera. But what I would encourage you to do is not look at it as a technical challenge, but a creative one. Yes, you need to figure out what the quote best exposure is. But remember, for any given exposure value, there are many ways of expressing that with a camera. don't do the math on this, but you can have a wide open aperture and a very, fast shutter speed and it will give you the same exposure result as a tighter aperture and a slower shutter speed. But the creative effect of that, right? The wider aperture will give you that dreamy depth of field, very isolated focus. Maybe there's out of focus highlights and it'll give you that bokeh look. the slower shutter will blur motion. And the two images, though, expose it exactly the same exposure value. and we're not even talking about moving the ISO around and expanding that. creative aesthetic possibilities are remarkably different. And so rather than focus on, there's this focus on getting it correct. Don't worry about getting it correct. Worry about the creative possibilities. Don't worry about getting the correct exposure worrying, worry about, which of the possible correct exposures is going to do the thing that I most want and learn that early on adjust to. And this is why I encourage beginners, especially don't stay on your program mode so long that you let the camera take over that. I've used aperture priority shutter priority. I now use I expose entirely in manual mode, but I let my ISO float and use exposure compensation on the back to, control that. But the sooner you can get comfortable with, do I want wide open aperture and a faster shutter speed? Do I want a tighter aperture because I've got more scene that's important to include? do I want a longer shutter speed? These are really important. The camera sees. So if I'm looking at a scene, let's say for example, I've got, a waterfall and that waterfall is being illuminated with a beam of light. The forest around it is really dark. Expose it the way the camera wants. If I'm on automatic, the camera is going to try to get detail out of those, that forest. The waterfall is going to be blurred. It's probably going to be a faster shutter. So I'm not blurred, but like blown out. It's just going to be pure white. and the faster the shutter speed will probably be, Um, but is that what I want the picture to actually look like? Like the camera thinks it's making a correct exposure, but it's ugly. I don't need to see all those details in the forest, especially at the expense of that blown out waterfall. And what choices can I make? can I stop it all the way down or close to that and therefore get a slightly slower shutter speed? Can I underexpose it a little bit more so that the waterfall is not blown out? Because that's the thing that my picture is about is the motion of that waterfall. I don't need the details in the trees. So that kind of thinking, it does take a while to develop, but I would encourage you not to get so fixed on the correct way of thinking and then go, okay, now it's time for advanced concepts. And then unlearn all the stuff you just learned about, you know, early on, begin to play. listen. If you're starting photography now, the learning curve is so, it's so abbreviated compared to what, people that learn like myself, learn to shoot on film. The feedback was much, you shoot and then like a week later, you get your, your pictures and you go through your little notebook with scrawled notes about, you What your aperture and shutter speed was. And you'd look at the pictures and try to figure out, Oh, how did I screw this one up? You know, 2436 really screwed up exposures. And now I got to figure out now and I got to try it again. You can go out and shoot hundreds of pictures and see right there and then see what's working and what's not, it's not about whether it's right. It's like, does it work for some people? same picture is going to have, like some people like intentional camera movement, right? And they move their camera around and nothing is sharp. It's all kind of impressionistic and it's poetic and it's beautiful. That's no writer or wronger than the person who puts it on a tripod and make sure that everything's tacked sharp corner to corner. And, We all are trying to accomplish something different with our pictures. And we have such incredible, creative possibilities with aperture and shutter speed, especially, and then add filters on top of that to maybe, increase the ability of the camera to, make a longer exposure. We have such possibilities. Don't get stuck, for the first 10 years, letting the camera make all those decisions and then go, Hmm, boy, how can I do this better? You need to take control. and that doesn't mean you have to shoot in manual. you can do that with aperture priority. You can do it with shutter priority, but you also need to make sure you're using your exposure compensation to. Make the picture look the way you want it to not the way the camera thinks and the cameras are getting better But they're still not at the point where the camera is gonna go. Oh, you know what? He wants to isolate for that single beam of light. So I need to underexpose it by five stops. This is not gonna happen that's where the thinking comes in. And that's where the, like looking at a lot of pictures, not even our own and going, I wonder how he made that, like what choices were made, I can see the water is blurred or the subject matter is blurred. So it was obviously a slower shutter. What compromises did the photographer have to make? why did he put this here and that there, which lens might he have used and how would I know that? Like these are all, I think, interesting questions. And again, if you're not consumed with obligation to get it right, and you're just trying to see what this thing can do, it's a lot more fun than, feeling like, Oh, I screwed up every time. No, you, you learn something, hopefully.

Raymond Hatfield:

Well, okay. that brings up an interesting question because, in your book, I wrote this down because it, it stood out to me. You had said after nearly 40 years, I still ask myself, what are the possibilities? That I'm not seeing how else can the camera see this? And you kind of talked about it there for a moment where it's like photographers, you know, listeners may be thinking, well, you see something with your eye, you point the lens at it, you press the button. That's it. Can you give me an example? Can you go a little bit deeper about how do you even perceive what are the possibilities that you're not seeing? Like that seems like an unknown unknown rather than a known unknown. Does that make sense?

David duChemin:

Yeah, no, it does. And that's where a lot of this comes down to exploration. So if I, for example, if I come on a scene and I'm making this up as I go, but let's imagine I'm, photographing a bear, my first instinct is, oh, my God, look at that bear. Look how beautiful it is. And I'm, Put on my 600 millimeter lens and I get in close and he's, you know, maybe what I've seen is the look on the bear's eye and he's got, you know, he's holding the fish in his mouth and I want to get right in there. But I shoot that and, then I started asking, okay, what am I missing here? What else am I missing just in general in the scene and what are the possibilities with the camera? and it could be that the light is interesting enough that I play with it. Maybe it's the bear is backlit and instead of sort of. exposing for the face. Now I underexpose it by five stops and I widen out a little, maybe I put on my 70 to 200, I'm at 70 millimeters now, and now I can see the whole bear and the bear is backlit and has this incredible, when I underexpose it incredible rim light around it. And all I can see is this dark silhouette. I can see the form of the bear with this incredible golden trace around it and some sparkles on the water. When I didn't underexpose it by. Five stops or however many. the highlights on the water were blown out. The highlights on the bear were blown out. Lots of detail I can see on the bear. These are two possibilities for a scene. the boat that I'm photographing on drifts a little closer to the bear. can I use the motion in some way? Could I, as the boat's moving, could I pan with the bear? So bear stays still, but everything else kind of has a feeling of motion. I don't know. And it may take, you know, a hundred frames and I may screw up every single one of them. But I've experimented, I've played, and I've used the camera's ability, you know, as my first instinct, to have a wider aperture and therefore a tighter focus and out of focus background. Is that the best instinct? I've grown suspicious of those instincts, of the shoulds. You should have your camera set, to F8 or whatever. Well, okay, but maybe, what am I trying to accomplish? Do I want, has the boat now drifted in front of some, some leaves? blocking some of the bear now is the chance to go wide open. So those leaves kind of create that out of focus blurred highlight and the bear is sort of hiding behind them and there's a little bit more depth. Maybe that's when I want to zoom out, zoom in a little bit more. Maybe now I'm at 200 millimeters. It's a little tighter, like, Explore rather than just to get that, you know, that safe shot, get the safe shot, get the safe shot, get it in the cam and then play and see if you can't come up with something that is more expressive of the scene. And the longer you do this, the more, Let's say we're still with the bear. Now I've been there for 10 minutes. The thing that I saw initially, well, a, it has changed, but I have changed. I have seen what's going on around me. I've seen the light change. I've maybe I've got that safe shot. So I'm feeling a little bit more confident to risk something. This ability to. Question your instincts and, and not just, it's like in science, they don't say, to prove the thing you're trying to prove, the good scientist actually tries to disprove it to make sure he's really on track. And I try to disprove my suspicion and my, you know, initial instincts. I try to kind of go, okay, what, what am I missing? Because it could be behind me. I mean, for all I know, I'm so focused and I see so many photographers show up at a landscape scene and, it's this iconic, it's in the book, you got to photograph this and they've seen pictures and they set their tripod up and I've looked around and gone. Um, is anyone catching the light back there? Like that's the moment. So it's just, maybe it's a humility of just going, you know, your first instincts may be correct for that one possibility, but they may also be wrong for 99 others. And, they may be the stronger ones. They could be that a better moment. You may have everything else dialed in, but it's like, now you got to wait. because that inside traveled with the photographer once they kept going, I got the shot and it drove me crazy. So I'm like, what does he think? Like, is it the shot is just a thing to be, you know, like, Oh, I got it. There it is. No, imagined. Every time you make a photograph going, I got the shot and your brain immediately shuts down. Go. Our work is done here. No, it's not. Things are still happening. The light is still changing. Maybe it's just the wind picking up and suddenly moving something. And you go, oh, there's a shot here. And I didn't see five minutes ago. Maybe it's, your battery expires, you take it out, you look as you're doing this, you look and you're like, Oh my God, look what's going on over here. I didn't even notice. it's just again, that, the paradigm of getting everything correct, I think is narrow focused. it's narrow thinking and creative thinking is more like, okay, that's one option. What else could I do with this? what is possible here? Is this the time when, you know, you finally, after 10 minutes notice, that's a reflection on the water. You're like, you know what, this would be stronger if I put that polarizer on and got rid of that reflection or the opposite by shooting this thing with a polarizer. Because everyone says, you know, you got to get rid of the reflections. And I realized, no, Actually, the reflection is the shot. Like I'm looking at the back of the camera going, ah, it's not, why doesn't it look as was cause I've been killing that beautiful reflection of the, the Aspens and in the water and it doesn't look as good. And then I take the polarizer off or spin it out and it's like, Oh, that's the shot just allowing yourself to, to sort of, you know, it's the beginner's mind is when you think you've got it all figured out is, is when you thinking gets so narrow beginner's mind is like, well, do I really know what I'm doing? I go in everything going, I'm not sure what's going on. I don't know. Like, what will the final shot be like? Picasso was asked, do you know what your paintings look like before you do them? He's like, if I did, why would I paint them? For me, photography is a lot about that exploration is just going. I don't know what's gonna happen here. Is the shot, the wide shot? Is it the tight shot? I don't know. Maybe it's lying down on my belly instead of standing up. Maybe it's walking around the scene. There's so many ways that we can help the camera, interpret light space and time and make a photograph that is more than what we initially suspected was possible. Mm-Hmm.

Raymond Hatfield:

I like that approach of coming at it like a scientist, come at it with your initial idea, take that photo and then try to disprove it of like, how can I take a better photo? Like I showed up to the scene. I thought that this was the photo. I took it now. How can I disprove myself and make a better photo and show that that wasn't in fact the right shot that definitely puts you in a more creative mindset for sure. that I think people do lack. And, it's interesting. It's like, I see. People post photographs, say online, and there's like this very clear misunderstanding of the technicals in the photo, they're not fully competent in how to use their camera to achieve what they were looking for. And it's like when there's any sort of, criticism or critique on the photo, it comes back with like this. Well, that's how I wanted to shoot it. Right. Well, well, that's, that's how it is. there's no wrong or right way in photography, which you said earlier, and I'm trying to wrap my head around, like, because we've talked a lot about the technicals here and getting the photo right for you. How do we balance that? the, there's a million ways to get the photo versus there still has to be some sort of technical understanding of how to capture the photo in the first place.

David duChemin:

Well, one, I, I don't think we can, uh, ultimately, I mean, if you went to the Paris Salon back when, you know Monet and, and his. Companions were first publicizing their work. they were mocked for what they did. And I guarantee you that the artists, and the critics that were mocking Monet, never made a painting that sold for what Monet's paintings now sell for. he broke the mold and they were all saying, that's not how you make a painting. So I'm very suspicious of the prescriptive approach. What I would say is, It has to be successful and a successful image depends very much on what you are trying to accomplish. So a beginner photographer, first of all, I think the, response to, well, that's how I wanted to make the image. I think that lacks a humility. you need to be open to learning and going, oh, okay, well, X amount of people have said they were bothered by this. That doesn't mean they call the shots, but maybe something's, not quite right with my approach or could be stronger. Maybe not. But I think we need to, be open to the possibility that we're not there yet.

Raymond Hatfield:

Hmm.

David duChemin:

I'm never there yet. I mean, a masterpiece is made by someone who has mastered the craft. And I think this is a craft that is almost to some degree unmasterable because there's no, end line, right? There's always a new thing that you can learn. And I think you have to take that criticism or that critique with a grain of salt because other people, let's face it, everyone's an armchair warrior. Everyone's got a microphone and half of them don't understand. I mean, they may understand the base, but here's an example. It drives me crazy when I see people talking online. about, you know, well, that, that lens is, isn't sharp edge to edge. And I'm like, dude, I'm sorry. If people are looking in the corners of your images, you're not, you're making a different kind of photograph than me. Like, if your criticism of my image is that the edges aren't sharp, it's like, well, Clearly I haven't done a good job with composition because why the hell are you looking at in the corners now if I've put something distracting there and it is sharp as an artist, you know, or someone who endeavors to be. So that to me is a, point of criticism where it's like, well, you've pulled my eye away from what this picture really seems to be about. is that what you wanted to accomplish? And that's where a critique needs to happen. A critique cannot happen outside of, a conversation, especially with students, you know, if a student says to me, what do you think of this picture? My first thought is not, let me unload everything I think about this photograph, because it would be unfair. It would be unfair for me to take all of it. the standards that I hold myself to after 40 years and apply them to a much younger photographer. but I would like to know what were you trying to accomplish? And then now let's talk about, okay, could you have made different choices with your exposure? Could you have underexposed? Could you have? Overexposed. Could you have focused somewhere else? Could you have used deeper aperture? Excluded? Included? Used different lens in a different way? Like all of these possibilities. That's how I like to approach this craft. Possibilities. And which one of those many possibilities appeals to you and how you saw this scene and experienced it? We will both make very, I've, I've stood beside very accomplished photographers and we're both photographing a scene. And then we both look at each other's pictures. It goes, where did you see that? I didn't even see that. It was like, I was standing right beside you. I was looking at a different thing. I was trying to express a different thing. It doesn't make theirs better than mine. Doesn't make mine worse than theirs. It's simply a personal set of choices, but I would be. Missing out. If I didn't look at that picture and go, Hmm, I see what you did there. I like, I didn't even think to use them, to capture a sense of motion because I was concentrating on this. So I'm a little suspicious about critique to begin with. I think unless someone understands what you're trying to accomplish, it's very hard to. get meaningful feedback, but what they can do is when, if you listen to critique, they can tell you whether you're accomplishing what you thought you were or not. And that's, I think that's valuable. That's like, Oh, okay. They, so my dad, my dad, he didn't like, he was a very literal photographer and he drove them crazy when I did like intentional camera movement or, let things go a little bit blurry to capture that motion because his, He was very old school. He was a photographer in the military and everything had to be well exposed and sharp. And that was like, that was the standard of success. It drove him crazy. He'd be, you know, he'd look at it and go, Hey, I don't, I don't get it. I photographed with a guy who was a sailor and I would set up my tripod and do these long ocean scape exposures where the ocean and the clouds would blur and it was very ethereal. I mean, I'm sure you're conjuring up. an image of what that might look like. And he came back, he look at my pictures. And one day he came up to me and he goes, are you wrecking the ocean again? Because he's like, to him, that's not what the ocean looked like. To me, I was looking for a thing. So his critique of, no, that's not what the ocean looked like. That's not, was for him very valid. And for me, not even a consideration. So you got to be very careful about what critique you listen to. And I think we should be equally humble about that. In terms of what critique we give because everyone photographs for different reasons and we're all writing a different poem and who's to say whether our use of grammar or syntax or choice of words is the right one.

Raymond Hatfield:

So then, if new photographers, they take a photo, they want to know if it's good or not, right? That's, that's the question that they're asking themselves. Is this anything? Is this good? Is this not? So that's the question that they pose is this photo any good? But clearly that's the wrong question. is what I'm hearing you say. What should photographers

David duChemin:

less than, it's less than helpful. It's less than

Raymond Hatfield:

Right. Right. Because then that leaves the person viewing the photo to then make assumptions of the photo and what they think, if it's good or not. So, what questions should photographers be asking themselves to ask the right questions to get proper feedback on their photos so that they can grow?

David duChemin:

Okay. So there is a starting point. There's kind of an inner circle where you at least have to know how to expose the camera. you have to have a sense of what your aperture will do, what your shutter speed will do. you have to be able to focus the thing after that. It's really a question of so is it good? Not helpful. Is it technically competent? That's a helpful question. Is it, if you look at it and everything's blurry, well, unless you intended to do that, and you may have, but unless you intended to, it's a question is did that accomplish what you want? Well, it's a picture of a bird in flight and it's just blurry as hell. Uh, it, you know, it could be artistic, but There's a lot of blurry pictures I've made that are just blurry. They're not artistic. so you do have to get to a point where you've used the camera enough that you're like, okay, I can control this a little bit in terms of what I want. Then to me, the question is, is it yours? Is it the picture you wanted to make? And from there, you got a crazy looking flow chart because the picture that is meant to be mysterious will be exposed differently than a picture that has other priorities. So not, is it good, but I wanted this picture to be mysterious and I want it to be about this thing. Does it do that for you? I wanted it to have a certain feeling. Does it accomplish that for you? Why? Why not? What choices could make it better too much? Like the number one thing I see with beginning photographers is I don't know what to look at. There's too much in the frame. The composition's all messy. It's all sharp and it's technically, you know, it's a well exposed. So, you nailed that inner circle. Now it's time to grow. Now it's time to take those tools. And interpret the scene and show me the thing that you want me to see or feel. And that takes a lifetime. I'm still working on doing that better because, as you make those pictures and you see them as successful, then you want to. Do one that is even, it's even better. It includes an extra layer of awesomeness, or expression or whatever. So Get technically proficient, but don't let that stand in the way because even technical proficiency is insufficient to move me as a viewer. The pictures that you see in national geographic or wherever you go to be inspired, they are not merely. Technically proficient, that's the price of entry. Like no one's even asking, is it focused? Because if it's not it's in the bin, they're asking, does it tell a story? Does it move me? is it simply composed or is it cluttered? just ask yourself those or look at your picture and go, how does it make me feel? Would someone that wasn't there know what this is really about? Or should you have been closer to the bird? Should you have? Excluded some of that shoreline, not just should like in adherence to the rules, but should you have done so in order for the picture to feel a certain way, if the picture is all shoreline and there's a little tiny bird, is there payoff there could be if the light is right, if the composition is interesting, if the colors play well together, I don't need to see the bird like, full in my frame, it might just be that little detail that guides me into the frame and gives me that payoff. If other things are working. So I mean, this is like saying, is a painting good? Is a song good? Who are you asking? But is it yours? And sometimes a picture here, this is important. Sometimes a photograph is, good because of what it represents. It represents that you took a risk. It represents that you finally nailed compositional principle. You've been trying to work on like scale or balance. It represents a step forward to you. And so in that sense, it's great. It is an important photograph for you. Is it good in the sense that someone else will, find it compelling? Maybe not, but no matter how good that picture is, there will be people that say, no pictures. No, not good. It's the guy that wants to see only pictures of puppies. Isn't going to like my pictures of rhinos because he's looking for pictures of puppies, right? We all, we see what we want to see. And There's an element in the photography world that is very concerned with getting it right, getting it sharp, getting it well exposed and never goes beyond that. They just want, I don't know. Do they want to get it sharper? Obviously, because they keep spending their money on sharper lenses, bigger sensors. but I don't care how big you print the image. If it's not compelling, if it doesn't make me feel something, all it is is sharp and no one ever, goes to an art gallery and goes, Mike, this isn't sharp. God, these pictures are sharp, like the way this photographer does sharpness, I just, man, and his histograms, like those are some histograms, man, like these are things that are concerns in the making or they can be in their tools, but you don't put your tools on display. You put the results on display. And I think that thinking can be helpful at least for creativity is about play. It's about freedom and you're not going to fail. You're just going to learn if you look at it as learning, if you make a lot of sketch images and kind of go up creativities, it's iterative. So you begin with a. And you go, Oh, that's not so, uh, but there's something in there that I like and how can I get close? Okay. Maybe I actually need to move physically closer. And so you get fit. Oh, that's a little better. Okay. Maybe a little wider, but closer still. Oh, wow. I like how that's done. Maybe if I move. Oh, I like what that does to the light. Okay. Now, and you make you 12 steps down the line. You're like, Oh, yeah, that's it. You finally get close to the thing that you're after. You can't make up your mind after the first shot and go, nah, this isn't working. Well, yeah, something's not working. It's you, you're not working. You gotta, you gotta, mine it. You've got to play, you've got to experiment. And I think that requires a sense of freedom and play. I don't think you can go into it. The more rigid I am about my craft, the less pleasing the results are because I'm just, I'm not thinking flexibly. I'm not playing and stumbling and recognizing when it comes, these happy accidents where you go, Oh, I wasn't trying to do that, but that's where the shot is. I'm going to pursue that. those are the moments of grace that I think. that's when you begin to go, okay, I'm starting to kind of get this a little, but I'm 40 years in folks. And I'm still feeling that sense of panic, that sense of, I have nowhere idea where to start. I do. I start with crap. wrote a book called start ugly because that's how the creative process begins with really ugly first shots. And you don't look at it and go, Oh, that's crap. And you throw it away. You go, what could I change? What could I make better? how can I get just a little closer? you're digging, you're just a little. And you're getting a little closer until you hit the lid of the treasure box and you're like, finally, if that's you, you're not the only one. Because I know a lot of photographers. Some of my best friends are National Geographic photographers. They're at the top of their game and that's how they work. They don't pick up the camera, get that one shot and go back to the tent. They work it and they work it and they work it. don't be discouraged if that's you.

Raymond Hatfield:

yeah, I do the exact same thing as well. Every time I show up somewhere, I try to take the boring shot first so that I can get it out of the way. And then start to go deeper and try to find, that deeper story. But, talk to me about, cause you do a lot of travel, work for NGOs. You've been, don't know. Have you been to all continents? Have you been to all seven? Okay.

David duChemin:

I have. Yeah,

Raymond Hatfield:

there's a level of, you have to produce something. You have to deliver. Something with your photos when you go to these locations. but it sounds to me like your style of photography is very, I don't want to say reactionary, but it's more playful than it is rigid. How do you balance these are the photos that I need. I'm going to go after these versus these are the photos that I ended up getting. These are the photos that allowed myself to play. Does that question make sense? I feel like that was a bit.

David duChemin:

it does. And I think the balance is found in time spent. it's, you have to go in with your expect, your, your mind open. we don't see with our eyes. We see with her mind. We perceive with our eyes. Or mind or heart or soul, whatever you want to call it, but our eyes are only, the hardware, and so you've got to go in with an open mind and you've got to go in thinking, not just what I think I need, but more like, these are the kinds of images I need, these are the kinds of, uh, This is what I want an image to feel like. And maybe you've been somewhere for a couple of days and you're like, okay, those initial expectations were not helpful because this place is different than I thought it would be. it's all about a different thing, a different feel, a different story. you could go to on a bear trip and the bears aren't there. What's your time is what mitigates that. You need to spend time to it's one of our raw materials. You cannot, I get people, they email me, they're going to Venice for 24 hours and like, I'm going to be in Venice for 24 hours. Well, you know, what are the must the things I must photograph? I'm like, dude, what you need to do if you're in Venice for 24 hours is put your camera away and go eat at some great restaurants and go for some long walks. And if you see, if you find the magic, then pull the camera out. Okay. Don't be that guy walking around Venice looking so hard with the camera because I got to get those 12 shots because when you look at that hard, you see nothing. You're not open. You're just so laser focused on the thing that you think you want. I got to find a gondola. That may not be where the magic is. You've got to have the magic. The experience. So don't go for 24 hours. Why? Why put yourself through that? Go for two weeks. And I realized that there's a luxury there. but those are our raw materials. And if you were a painter and you said, David, I want to paint Venice, but I only have the color red. I'd be like, well, I don't know what to tell you, man. Venice, sure you can make it happen, but I don't have an answer for you. that's like a photographer saying, I want to go to India, but I only have three days. Well, good luck to you. You know, if that's the case, then go to one place, go to one street corner, one, 500 foot radius and photograph that for 300, go to one mosque, go to one temple, go there every day, spend your time, photograph that. Because. If you try to photograph everything, you will end up photographing nothing. So, in response to your question, I think time is it the more time you spend, the wider your eyes will get, the wider your mind will get, the more experiences you will have, the more you will be able to work through that necessary process of starting ugly, making kind of crappy sketch images, getting closer and closer to the good stuff. I have just never been able just to show up and turn it on. That's not the way we work generally. if what you want are really strong images, and maybe I'm just a slow learner. Maybe I'm the guy that's like everyone else is showing up and doing it in three days, but I, I need three weeks. And when I go to, uh, like India and the guys are like, oh, how long are you staying? You know, I'm just, I'm walking, I'm meeting people every time I tell them I'm here for a week or two or three weeks, they're like, Why? What? Why? And I'm like, well,'cause. That's how long it takes me to see a place. You cannot show up in a town in India and say that you've seen it all in one or two days. And that's what the itineraries do. They take it boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. And you go and you see everything, but really you look at everything, but you see nothing. Because you can't go to a market. You can't go to Piazza San Marco in Venice and say, Oh, I've seen it. No, you haven't. You haven't seen it in at midnight. You haven't seen it when the fog rolls in. You haven't seen it during Aqua Alta, when the waters rise and the buildings reflect, you've seen it one second in an annual, if you want to really see it, you got to spend time. Not everyone has that time, but if you can spend a day, spend two, if you can spend two days, spend four, and don't buy that new lens that that Mark two, that's going to be the.

Raymond Hatfield:

sharp in the

David duChemin:

there's no money lens and sharpen course, instead of spending that, that 3, 000 on that new lens, spend a week in a place, whether that's like somewhere far away or whether it's you flying to New York or whether it's just booking studio time, whatever kind of photography you do, spend the money on that and the time, because you will make stronger photographs, then you'll learn more, you'll get better. I need to dust. You know, the gears off. Like when I get to a place, my first couple of days, my cameras are out. I'm sort of getting reacquainted and seeing and smelling and experiencing. And it's only after a couple of days that I'm like, okay, now I can start working. what if I only go there for two days? I never get to that point. I'm always leaving just at the point where I'm like, ah, no, well, maybe next time it won't be next time. Cause next time I'll still only be there for two days. You've got to spend more time. And that I'm convinced that applies to everything, whether it's more time in the studio, more time, at a wedding or whatever, it's time that will help you get through that. Not only time, but that's seems to be the one that people are least. Willing to give to their discipline.

Raymond Hatfield:

yeah, that's interesting, isn't it? So then, how do we know when we've given something enough time? How do we know when we've accurately captured something? Good enough.

David duChemin:

well, I mean, those are two different

Raymond Hatfield:

Okay. Okay. let me rephrase.

David duChemin:

well, no, me take a tack at it because I think one is the answer is you don't, you never know. Like, if I'm standing on a street corner in India, and I've spent all day there, I don't know that if I leave now that I, something amazing wouldn't happen in the net, but you can kind of play the odds and you go, okay, I have put in my time. I have put in my time. I was going to spend 10 minutes here. I've spent an hour here. you maybe know that there are other things that you could be pursuing. and you take a guess, but how do you know that you've got, you know, good enough? Well, one, that's not what I'm aiming for. if what I come home from a trip is good enough, it's not good enough. Like, so when I do an edit, I'm not looking for, okay, these are two stars. These are three stars I'm going through. And the only pictures I'm interested in are the ones that are a hell yes, because that's the work I'm after. I'm not after, I can still learn from all of the other shots and I will look at them, but the final images are not good enough. I'm looking for the one when I look at the back of the camera and I go, Ooh, Oh, wow. And I know that sounds, I know that sounds, you know, like a lack of humility, but there's nothing wrong with looking at your work and being surprised by it and feeling joy and delight in having got to that point where, Oh my God, like this, this is better than I expected. There are those moments. And the only thing I can say is I feel it here. I'll come back from. morning of shooting and my wife will often stay in and she's like, how did it go? I'm like, don't know. So what did you get? Anything you like? And I'm like, I don't know. but I had fun or, but it was really, there was a, an emotional response that I'm coming home and I can't wait to put the card into the computer and look. that's when, you know, you're on the right track, but, I'm nervous for questions that are, how do you know, because creativity, we love it. live and work in uncertainty and we may never know, right? And so how you really know is when you pull up those images and you go, man, I thought I totally blew it, but I love this image. I can't believe I, that's when you know, you feel something that's your hell. Yes. and it'll be different in five years. You'll look at that picture and go, Because your target has moved, right? so it's this, it's this wonderful game of like, how can I learn? How can I lean into this? Photographers often are trying to eliminate all the challenges, and to make it easier, easier, faster, better, whatever. But the fact is those challenges, challenge leads to flow. If you're biting off just a little more than you can chew and your brain is super engaged and you're spending more time and time is kind of Like, you know, it's like you thought you were there for five minutes, but actually you've been there for an hour. That's flow. And that's where our best, work gets accomplished. And it cannot happen without challenge. It can't happen without a problem you're trying to solve without something you're kind of digging your creative teeth into. Certainty is actually a very rare commodity in any creative space.

Raymond Hatfield:

guess I couldn't have, asked for a better answer than that. cause I mean, you're right. It absolutely is. there's no definition, right? I guess what I was trying to get at there is that there are times where for most people, let's see, they take their cameras on vacation with them, you know, wherever they're going and maybe it is a defined amount of time and they do want to make sure that they capture, Just some good images, right? And there's, there's always going to be that question of, you're always going to be able to say, Oh, if I would have waited, I could have got a better photo. If I would have waited, I could have got a better photo. But I guess what I was trying to get at there was like, what is your litmus test for whether a photo is, is good or not? And whether you can leave. Happy with what it was that you produced while you were out. And I think that you answered it there. You know, the looking at the back of a camera and feeling something or feeling like I can't wait to get home and put these on my computer. It'll look at them. it really is an internal thing. And I guess I was just looking for a shortcut and you put me right in my place to let me know there's no shortcuts when it comes to time.

David duChemin:

Yeah. Let, let, let me know if you find one. I, I I, there's a good little lesson there. I mean, I don't think shortcuts ever pay off. we're always looking for them. We always want to get there, but I think it's because of this feeling of pressure. Like I got to get the shot. Look, when you're on vacation, you're right. You only have so much time and some of that time is taken up by a partner, a spouse, children, other obligations, whatever. The thing to focus on is the experience. Have a great day. Experience because you really can't photograph well what you haven't experienced well or deeply and it's better to come back from that trip to Venice that maybe it's your white once in a lifetime trip to come back with like a head full of memories and you remember it as this really great playful time and you discovered this and that. Maybe you didn't come back with the best photographs. It is far better to come back from Venice with a SD card full of crap photographs and having had an amazing time having built those memories because they will get better with age. The photographs won't, but over time you will actually look back at those pictures and they will mean something to you. I can't count the number of pictures I've thrown away over the years and now Wish they were terrible pictures, but they meant something to me. And now I would love to have them. The memory is better. The experience is better than the photograph. And if you come back and you've had a, yes, maybe you came back with one or two images and you really liked them, but you had a crap time because there was so much pressure and you were always out there pacing around trying to get the shot. that's no way to live. And that's no way to be creative. creativity needs discipline, it needs rigor for sure. But it also needs the freedom to play. And that's not playfulness. If you're out there and you're just like, I gotta get the shot, the camera away and find something you enjoy. you gotta be able to breathe. You gotta be able to, while you're making those photographs going, even if I didn't have a camera, look at this, like those are the experiences. And I think when you're in that headspace and that heart space. You will over time with a growth in your skill and what you consider to be a strong photograph You will make stronger photographs. But again, there's no certainty. I've come back from whole trips with no pictures at all oh, yeah I went to Lao and Cambodia once that and I like I don't even think I have a folder on my On my computer called Lao in Cambodia anymore, because I give my images a lot of I like I try I'll go I'll reedit them Keep them for a couple of years but at a certain point you're looking at them and just going I got nothing like truly had nothing

Raymond Hatfield:

Like, what was it about those photos that you weren't happy with? where was the disconnect?

David duChemin:

don't know. I mean I'd had an accident. Broken my feet. I was only newly kind of back on the field walking and there were a lot of other things going on emotionally. Look, we're whole people. we're here, not just cameras, people that, you know, bodies that carry cameras around. So your emotional, space is, is important when you're making photographs. And if you're not there or the camera can't get you there, for some people, it's an outlet and the camera does get them there, but there are times when you just got to put the camera away. Okay. When it's just not working out where, you go into the studio and paint something that just doesn't work out and you have to scrape it all off. I mean, the real loss there is that you don't learn something from it, but it's not a loss. If you go to Lao in Cambodia, have a, as good a time as you can, as I did. I mean, I have fond memories of that trip, but the pictures that I was trying to make, just never. They never materialized. And I have, I have other trips that I've gone on and I come back with far fewer images than I would have liked. And it's for one reason or another. And some of it was that I was being too rigid. Some were, you know, especially early on, maybe I made poor choices with where I went or the time of year. Like it can't be all magic all the time. And we have this expectation that, well, I'm going to come back with, 200 images I can put on Instagram. I go to my, on my trips. I'm like, I'll be happy if I come back with. Eight or 12, that realistically by the end of the year are probably only three or four that I look at and go, I'm very satisfied with that. I challenged myself. I accomplished something that I haven't done in other photographs. I've attributed to a body of work, whatever I'm trying to accomplish. But to look back and go, well, that trip was a waste. It wasn't. It was an amazing experience. The food I ate was fantastic. And it's just one aspect of it that didn't turn out because I, for whatever reason, I, there was a disconnect and that happens. And so you can go for a morning out and look, I've experienced this so many times over the last 40 years. And you go out and you. You bang away with the camera and you kind of bang it against your expectations and your hopes and the actual circumstances because the weather's not cooperating. And sometimes you come back surprised and other times you come back and you're like, well, you know what? I can format that SD card pretty quick, But what a great time, you know, for me, the camera is a means to an end and the end is not the photograph. That's a happy coincidence. And I love that. But the end is the experience. A camera in my hand means, generally speaking, I experience a place with. greater receptivity. I spend more time because I know that's what it takes to make a better, stronger photograph. And in spending more time, I will meet different people. I will have broader, deeper experiences, and I feel more alive as human being when I have a camera in my hand. And. I'm doing those things and that has nothing to do with the photograph on the other end. That's a whole separate thing. it's important, but the two are not always connected. And I would encourage, you know, we, we don't look, we don't live that long. Life is short. You've got to have. The experiences you're going to have, you got to be awake to this life. You got to be, engaged in it. And for me, a camera does that. And happily, the more engaged I am, and the more time I spend, and the more I learn from my mistakes, the better these photographs, but it is not, you cannot go on my website and look at the photographs and say, boy, he's, I will, you will, some people do boys must have a really good camera. It has nothing to, you won't, you won't be able to go on the, on my site and go, Oh, that's, that's where he moved from Fuji to Sony. Look how much better his pictures are now in some ways they are. Cause I shifted disciplines and the Sony's focus better and faster, and they've helped me accomplish some things I might not otherwise, but they are no more creative. They are no more expressive than the pictures I made with my Leica or 10 years ago made with my Nikons or, or whatever. the craft is so important, but it is still only a means to an end. And so, that's why I wrote this book light, space and time, because camera craft and creativity, there's a play, an interplay between them that, you know, it's because cameras don't make photographs. We make photographs through an accumulation of our decisions and the thinking about those decisions is what will make those photographs stronger or weaker. They will make them more like what you hope for and dream of and intend to create or less. But it will, generally speaking, it'll not be the camera. It will be the choices you make with that camera and that's, everything's up here. And so that's why I, wrote that book and why I'm so, excited and passionate about, the human stuff, because the end of the day, that's what makes a picture that you or someone else will look at and go, Oh my God. Right. But you've got to have that, Oh my God, experience first, before you try to put it into a photograph.

Raymond Hatfield:

that was beautiful. coming to the end of our time, David. I got one last question for you. And, I actually, reference you quite a bit on the podcast here. Specifically when I read your book the visual toolbox, intro in the visual toolbox says, and I'm, I'm paraphrasing here the, the best photography school, yeah. Would be just one year with one 35 millimeter film camera, one lens, and then like 365 rolls of film, and you don't come back till they're all shot. there's a lot of photographers today who don't get into photography through film. They're shooting digital. so one, let me ask, do you still subscribe to that? And if so, like, what's the bigger idea behind this for those who are shooting digital? Because, one, I love the idea, and I guess, second, would you even consider doing that today? Like,

David duChemin:

Oh, God, no. Oh, God, no. No, I, and I'd have to go back and read that intro again, because I, part of it, resonates with me. And the other part, I'm like, did I really write that? I got to go through that with a red pen. And

Raymond Hatfield:

There were a few more words. Again, I paraphrased.

David duChemin:

Yeah. Well, if I wrote it, there sure were a lot more words. did it with film. I would say film's a different medium. If you're not going to be a film photographer. I haven't shot film for years. then no, you've got to learn the medium. You expose differently for digital. There's a whole other thing. But I would say that if you're first starting out what you could learn with a simple camera. I had a camera when I first started out that had I'm not exaggerating. Here's here's what I could control. I could control the shutter. I could control the aperture and I could focus it I could determine which ISO was, you know, film was going in. That was it. There was no exposure compensation. There was no bracketing. There was no, like, Nothing. When I look at that initial, it was a Pentax spotmatic. It was fully manual, no automatic. And I look at that next to my Sony and all the buttons and menu items, they're almost completely different. They're just like, but what I learned because of the lack of options was the simplicity of those choices. At the end of the day, it's about what do you do with the light? Where do you focus and how much is in focus? You nail that. Relatively quickly because there are no other options and because of that and a simple choice of lens, maybe it's just one zoom lens. Maybe it's a 16 to 35. You learn the language of that lens. You learn what a 35 millimeter lens or a 50 millimeter lens does well and what it doesn't do. Well, you learn how to use it. as opposed to now we get cameras with every creative option, we get a bag of lenses with every possible focal length and we don't learn to use any of them particularly well, or if we do, we don't learn to use any of them. So, now it takes a long time, a wide angle lens, but it wasn't a zoom, it was in between each of those. And I learned. I can still see the world in 24 millimeters or 28 millimeters. I now know when I'm at a scene, I'm like, that's a 16 millimeter scene and I need to be much closer to my subject in order for the foreground to be bigger, the background to be smaller. I can see it. I can see in my mind. I know I can look at a scene and go, that's 300 millimeters. That's 600 millimeters for what I want to accomplish. and I think when we get a camera that has all All creativity happens under constraint, not lack of constraint. Everyone's like, I gotta think outside the box. No, you don't. Creativity happens with what, what you do inside the box, right? Cause that's what we have to work with when you have no limits. It's very hard to master any of the tools that we're working with. So yes, if I was doing a photography school right now, I'd actually probably say, you know what, for first year iPhone only, because you would learn very quickly. it has all the capabilities and you would be undistracted by the gear last year, you wouldn't be running, it would be iPhone only you go out and you learn composition, you learn color, you learn in case of black and white, you learn about tonal contrast, you learn. About choice of moment and how to work within constraints. No, you don't have eight, 800 millimeters and you don't have 8000th of a second. You don't have strobes. That would force people to get so comfortable with those constraints that after a year they would see the way the camera sees in a whole other way. But that's ideal and not everyone's going to do it. And so I would say wherever you're at, But just remember that there is a difference between becoming a very good camera, you became really good at camera craft and, becoming really good at the creativity. There are two things that can be so beautifully married, but if you approach the one without the other, I think you are missing out on so much.

Raymond Hatfield:

I really appreciate you breaking that down, especially if that's, definitely a much more modern version, to use the iPhone and I think coming from using cameras with full manual controls, often I like the simplicity of just shooting with an iPhone every once in a while, you know, going out with the kids and going to the skate park or something like that. And I think that'd be a really, great challenge for somebody to take on again, to learn, to see composition and light and moment and all the things that like, aren't the technical side of photography yet, the stuff that, really makes up an image. So I appreciate you sharing that. cause again, I talk about that all the time on the podcast, cause that just sounds so simple and so fun. And who knows, I might continue to try that for myself. Maybe 2025 will be the year that. It's just one camera, one lens, 365 rolls of black and white Tri X for me, and we'll see how it goes.

David duChemin:

it can be so playful. I always have my iPhone on me and there is a moment when I know that I'm in the zone when I'm focused, I'll, my first instinct, my camera's usually in the bag. My first instinct is just play with my iPhone and it's playful and it's fun. And there's a, there's an aha moment where I go, oh yeah. I'm looking at it. I'm like, Oh, yeah, that's when I put the iPhone away. I pull out my real camera and not always, but especially with street stuff and walk around because when it's just me and my big boy camera, I take myself far too seriously and my expectations are far too high. But if I'm with, you know, just my iPhone, I don't, I'm just playing. I'm just, you know, moving it around. I'm doing, and there's a real difference in approach. Yeah. Between the two. So they work really well together for me because I can now, I don't use my iPhone when I'm out photographing bears for the most part, or, you know, it has changed because wildlife, but, that playfulness, if you can embrace that. Every time you press the button with film, it costs you money. Every time you press the button with on an SD card, the only possibility is to either get a, photograph you love, or you learn something. So press the button more. and look at it and go, ah, okay, I like that. I don't like that. Let's move. Playfulness. If I could get more people just to be playful and take this all so less seriously, but Winnie the Pooh say, this is all too important to be taken so seriously.

Raymond Hatfield:

David, I don't know how to end it any better than that. that was the perfect, uh, final quote

David duChemin:

That's a wrap. We're out of here.

Raymond Hatfield:

I don't know how many times Winnie the Pooh has been, referenced on the podcast before, but,

David duChemin:

I live to serve.

Raymond Hatfield:

yes. David, I know that listeners are thinking to themselves, that they want to see some of your work. They want to see some of your teachings, your books, your offerings. where's the best place to do that? Where should we go online to find you?

David duChemin:

Absolutely. The best place is just my website. David Duchemin. com. from there, there are links to my portfolio. There are links to my books, my eBooks. you could search for me on Amazon. I've got, I don't even know how many books, but there are quite a few of them out in different languages. And, but if you go just to David Duchemin. com, that's kind of the hub. And, from there you can find me on Instagram, same handle at David Duchemin. Yeah, that'll take you everywhere you need to.

Raymond Hatfield:

Being massive. Thanks to David, once again, for coming on to the podcast, I'm going to share with you my three main takeaways. Takeaway. Number one is just to focus on the fundamentals. I know that seems so like, well, yeah, of course, but it's not, you know, I know how easy it was to get bogged down by all the technicals and buttons and settings of modern digital cameras when I first got into it. So start with just the basics, the shutter speed, aperture, ISO, start to understand the different camera settings and how you can achieve the same exposure, but create different creative outcomes with just those three settings. Takeaway number two, experiment with intent. Do not be afraid to leave auto mode behind again. It feels scary. It's like, ah, but in auto mode, I know that I can capture a well exposed image, but it's, diving into manual mode that you'll be able to push the boundaries of what you even considered possible. To be able to then create images that are much closer to the vision that you have in your head before you press that shutter button. So, start safe, capture the safe shot, however you need to, whether that's auto mode or, you know, whatever. But once you get that safe shot, turn that dial to manual and push yourself. Takeaway Takeaway number three is to embrace time and constraints. The constraints of time, of limited equipment, use those to spark your creativity, focus more on the composition, focus more on the light, focus more on the emotion. If you don't have. All the gear that you can ever imagine or ever want or that you, you know, dream of focus on those composition, light, emotion, and then spend more time in just one spot, rather than spending less time in 10 different spots, focus on going deeper into an image. And not wider. I hope that made sense. I would love to hear your biggest takeaway in the free and amazing beginner photography podcast community, which you can join right now by heading over to beginner photopod. com that's beginner photopod. com forward slash group. That is it for today. Until next time, remember the more that you shoot today, the better of a photographer you will be tomorrow. Talk soon