Right & Left Sides

&you know to make a sharp image, you need to have the shutter set a least has fast as the focal length. Incredulous stare from 10 year old. Ya, for a 70-200mm lens like you have there, a shutter speed set to 1/70sec would work great. He looks at his camera not getting it. &but of course if your lens was at 200mms itd be 1/200sec. Glazed look begins to form and he begins to wonder why he cant just go out and shoot. &or, if you turned that VR thing on, you could handhold down to 1/25sec as you point to the VR switch. Hes now totally uninterested as if hes in a Peanuts show with the teacher talking from a thousand miles away.

What happened? I dont believe he had the capability to assimilate all that technical detail mumbo jumbo. Its kind of like trying to read a legal document. After figuring out your head hurt trying to understand what it said, you begin to wonder about the whole point of the document. Same thing here with my boy, he wasnt getting the point.

For some reason when we get older, the linear technical side becomes a lot more powerful. The left side of the brain becomes dominate. At least thats how it works in our world. Clearly daily trials dealing with the taxman, bills, fuel economy, television, cable& prepares us for the challenges of the technical side of photography.

Now what happened with the other side of the brain? Nothing, its still there but it doesnt get exercised as strongly as your left side on a daily basis. I believe institutionally creative thought doesnt get much attention in our lives like the technical left side. When was the last time you were asked at work to create something. Minimal if any direction was given. Think out of the box, well accept anything. I never get those kinds of opportunities. Or if you did, what would you do? Sit there wondering what to do?

Thats the challenge of our lives, nurturing the creative side in a world that wants nothing to do with it.

Unfortunately, having a strong creative bent with a meaningful technical ability is a absolute must to make great imagery. As I noted before you need to have that left side dealing with the management of your equipment while the right is guiding your vision. You need both or else you have perfectly exposed, uninteresting imagery or you simply cant get there since the medium is too complicated to deal with which causes you to drop photography in general and take up sketching instead.

Photography is special in its mental needs. Its the perfect forum for those with a clear sense of artistic esthetics and penchant for things technical. So, I say embrace both to get the most out of your photography.

Cheers

Tom