Years ago, on a music producers forum, called “Future Producers”, a fellow maturing producer once quipped “a photograph is like true love, and a moving image is more like an unexpected casual romantic surprise.”

I found this to be quite poetic. Recently I went through a phase where reconnecting with my love of photography was part of affirming the fact that i am experience my life experience as i do so.

Before this almost-obsession, I was fully obsessed with “bokeh” and “shallow depth of field” in both photography and cinematography.

It was defined in a variety of ways, this … visual phenomenon. “Painterly” … “Traditional Portrait Style Photography - nothing to make a lot of noise about here … “Something to Dream About” - that was me until I invested in Sony’s first “affordable to the prosumer market” model of their previously “Only for the professional film makers who know what why and where they want it."“ …. the film camera line this refers to that evolved progressed and improved over the years as technology made new ways of doing things potentially recommendable was the interredting moniker of “Exmor”. What this word means exactly i do not know however what is clear is that Sony’s Exmor line of film cameras is amongst the most respected in the world.

How interesting I would have waited until now to research what the word means, when in fact it was 2009 that i invested in the Sony Ex-1 (with the widely acclaimed big beautioful Fuji Film lens and the nice long barrel between lens and sensors).
Trusty Wikipedia to the rescue: "

”Exmor is a technology developed by Sony and implemented on some of their CMOS image sensors. It performs on-chip analog/digital signal conversion.”

• Wikipedia

Sooo… what more to say? Interestingly enough it was a love affair with the true cinematographic options available to true professionals for the seven years I was blessed to interact with this amazing image recording masterpiece. Truly. I do not believe this is an inappropriate use of a superlative.

My father’s very large film size early-yet-treasured device, using 5inches of photorreactive film to accomplish a single single frame capture. Five inches … it is a while since i reaqcuainted myself with this type of camera, a type of camera that some photography professionals in the world today actually point to as the apex of devices for particular uses … such an elaborate, professionally lit model photography sessions.

He also had a penchant for making and home-developing 8mm film … just him and Mum exploring England and France … and then the far north coast of New South Wales, Australia. His device of choice was a vintage Russian-made 8mm film camera that did not in fact require batteries: … if memory serves correctly this relic of cool saturated B&W video wow and flutter, occasional momentary artefacts … was spring-wound or actually the filmographer was expected to wind the film at a steady pace judging by experience the ponderable question of how slow or less-slow their continual handle-to-film-reel manual winding was required.

An acquired talent to be sure and either you got it or you ain’t. This becomes obvious fairly soon. Some people could adapt to this somewhat imprecise way of filming.

As for myself, I now use the iPhone 8+ for Photography as this is the first model to use two cameras on the back of the phone to capture two versions of reality, then some light-behaviour modeling coding genius with Apple came up with the wonderful - in my humble option , genius - idea of using the two ccameras to capture content in two different ways with two different focuses; one being the image the photographere was framing and organising the focus thereof onscreen, and i think the other cameras on the back of the iPhone 8+, was … I do not quite know to be honest. It was gathering an information that allowed for a combination of real-world data and light-behaviour code modelling to be married into a “Traditional Portrait Mode” type of image with the foreground in focus and the background pleasantly blurry.

If I had the Sony EX1 and the particularly useful Manfrotto tripod, would I be using that instead? I would use both. When placed in the custom foam-closetted Pelican Case the Sony EX1 is certainly not a display of unbelievable manpower to lift and carry for some distance… and the Manfrotto tripod had also evolved; highly respected quality; particularly cool styled carrying case, and not a big weight to write home about by any means.

The iPhone fits in your pocket. So do Android, Google Pixel phones, Samsung Galaxy phones, Nokia Phones … I am not an Apple “fanboi” by any means, it just so happens that the user-interface they bring tends to be naturally compreehensible to my interpretation or presumption of how things function or where options are to be found.

It is a long story as to where my film camera and tripod are … and to be quite honest, it is too long to rave on about on a webpage. Suffice to say, I love the iP{hone 8+ so much I scored another from eBay recently. So now I have two. It’d like IO am walking around in a dream not knowing what to do with myself.

That is an unrecommendable mental state for somebody who has yet to prove themselves in the industries they work amongst.

By now I know that data does not exist unless it exists in 3 places (a saying amongst the inner circles of knowledgeable Geeks).

As regards backing up claims in bio or declarations in CV … evidence talks and bullshit walks. Visual evidence. Put a particularly good project online on your own website or on somewhere like Flikr… or Instagram … potentially on your artist page space allowance with Adobe Creative Cloud … Mentioning these options is not an encouragement to flood the entire internet of 2025AD with your happy snaps.

I am merely saying that if you have talent, at some stage there is always going to be a source of demand for that talent. If all you need do is provide a business card with an adequate online linktree address, then you are sorted. For believability. And much more. Detecting your style and strengths is one of the talents of a technical director or. creative director. They need to get satisfyingly wide-ranging access in a rationally presented situation in order for them to form a proper opinion or decision.

For decades - maybe two, maybe three, i thought “creatives” were just incredibly lucky persons who somehow miraculously received remuneration for fiddling about with gadgets, ideas, and-or software.

Oh how wrong. Or how non-thinking. Oh how unwilling to think properly about the situation and collection of talents that I had and was naturally investing time and resources to improve. I did this … as an instinctive response to the sense of identifying and recognising I was multi-talented. I knew it was in some ways a heavy burden or to put it in a more balanced context, “to whom much is given, much is expected.”

After a while I unconsciously wondered if the ongoing “improvement of quality” was ever going to arrive somewhere. Gladly, has, and have done so.

Opt Eye Amazing
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photographer, visual installation enthusiast and video artist.