Mark wrote: > In the tenth grade we had a science teacher that a buddy of mine was arguing over something and we went and asked her. Instead of telling us the answer, she said their is some in the back cabinet go find out. Once we knew what would happen, she asked one more question. Why?? We thought for a minute and I came up with the answer. That's the way I was taught to read by my mother - here's a book, here's a dictionary, you do the rest. I was encouraged to question and seek answers myself rather than asking questions.. > Not all theory is important. Anyone know how the numbers of the various F stops are computed? I do but does anyone really care? relationships become more apparent when the numbers are understood and not just 'known'. understanding and applying guide numbers is easier for a start. the old square root of two really is a rather magical number :) >Has not knowing ever effected the outcome of a single picture? the calculations themselves? probably not.. the aperture selected?, constantly >You did get me curious on what a Beyer array is and how it affect things. the bayer array has a lot less of an impact than the algorithms used to interpolate colour data from the said array, and again for most people it is neither here nor there, it just *is*. Hardware makers can fiddle firmware to improve results and it's just something that's intrinsic to the camera (not a lot different from having a specific emulsion type) And who can do anything with knowing the algorithms anyway? They're fixed and not able to be changed by the photographer.. If the algorithm interprets soft mauves as blue (as many a film did) - what can you do about it? Well - *knowing* this happens can lead you to select a camera (or a film stock) that'll let you get more accurate results or less if that's your desire. knowing which lens to use can give you the compression or expansion you desire. sure, many a great photographer owned but a single lens - it was always advocated in the film teaching days 'get a 50mm and learn to use it' (or 'get a 135 and learn to use it' when 5x4 was the order of the day :) - but the photographer who didn't understand the effects a lens could produce wasn't ever going to naturally find there way to the picture they desired. funny that example though - there IS a way to get the compression of a 200mm with a 50mm lens, and if you're prepared to make a lot of images, you can even duplicate the effect of a 35mm lens with a 50mm too! but you kinda gotta understand *how* Likewise, one does not need a stereo camera to make stereos, but understand the principle and you're away. Herschel wrote: >In a similar vein, A representative from a sports injury hospital, speaking about shoes said that years ago only the natural athletes tried to run marathons. They did it in canvas tennis shoes and had no problems. Now-days, people without the natural athletic ability are training themselves up to marathon level beyond the natural limits of their bodies. These people need the right kind of shoes to make up for the lack of natural structure in the ankles and feet. Yet all those marathon runners had different feet, otherwise we'd be able to just examine a foot and say 'marathon runner' All have different lung capacities, all different races. One thing that separated them was desire, another, the 'natural ease' as we term someone who has become familiar with their body and knows how to use it in a given situation. A friend went to a yoga class recently and was asked by the teacher of many years standing (and a highly awarded teacher at that) how many years this person had been doing yoga - the answer 'this is my first lesson'. The teacher said they had a body awareness that took most people years of discipline to achieve.. and many more years of yoga to 'forget' the teaching and to just BE >We can analyse and take apart the pictures to try to understand how that natural ability works so that people without it can use the data to try and do the stuff we admire in their pictures but in the end all we have is a cheap imitation of it. killing the goose :) >I believe that with encouragement and inspiration we can help people take the best pictures they can without feeling guilty that they don't conform to standards set by the gatherers of data. that's a nice way to think of it :) :) >In time they always become curious about the technology that made it possible. At that time the teacher should be ready to give them what they ask for. I think we're all coming from very different angles on this.. >That being said, I teach a vocational course producing photographers for commerce and not necessarily for art. But everything I do is tempered by the above sentiment. Let's hope I'm not killing any spirits.... ..and that's why Teaching for commerce, teaching for art, teaching for science, teaching for research, teaching for technical support - they're all valid (clearly!) but they all have differing desired outcomes. Some at the college I taught were critical of the technical component and felt there was no need to be teaching all the tech stuff, 'what good was it in helping make good pictures?' they'd ask. well since we also produced all of the techs, the printers, the archivists and the rest of the support network personnel the 'photographers' depended on so heavily, I personally felt it *was* important. There was a very telling difference between a spotty teenager on a low wage printing your image and the guy who'd dedicated most of their adult life to the art. Behind the doors of the lab though, they were largely anonymous .. I've been guilty of giving a kid a camera and encouraging them to go nuts without guidance. Hard to hold back and not try to teach them about DOF and stuff too! ;) I sort of see that as rudimentary, but in this instance I was quick to recognise that a youngster was *not* ready to hear such things. We're only ever ready to learn something when we've passed certain goals and we're at *that point* I confess to having a greater ease teaching technical photography than art. Watching 'artists' getting frustrated with their results and trying to help only to watch their eyes glaze as we try to ascertain what they do and do not know is difficult. When you see someone shaking the heck out of the dev tank in their enthusiasm to get the 'boring' part over with to see their negs - seeing them get annoyed because they don't want to take advice on board, neither liking the advice OR the results they get from not following it. One girl in particular comes to mind .. she'd been in all the classes, the process and mechanisms of development had been explained to everyone but she's shake away furiously then almost cry when she'd have these fuzzy, contrasty negs to print from .. or she'd be bored and forget to agitate at all (then she's be almost in tears at the thin, streaky negs) and she'd always exclaim "it's all so EASY for everyone else!" She actually had a really good eye for things too which made it that much harder. I really would have loved to have seen her getting better results, getting to the point where she didn't need to think about (and worry about) the processing and could just get on with making good images. An extreme example I know.. Another thing. I'm guessing a lot of us are forgetting just how much we know. We take certain things for granted, we've forgotten just how deep our knowledge runs as we've ceased thinking about 'it' and we just do 'it' instead. Like the walking example. None of us have this knowledge innately, we've learned it all from somewhere and what do which might be perceived as being done with ease is actually as a result of a lot of work and mistakes (or learning experiences as I like to call them) this was brought home to me when I was working in a garden centre once, a woman paid for a bag of fertilizer then asked me what to do with it (!) I told her to throw it around at the recommended rate on the ground below the plants (thinking 'what the heck does she mean?!) and she gave me a look like I was joking - I realised she knew *nothing at all* about plants. Someone had told her that her garden needed fertilizer so she bought some.. I explained how plants had roots and they fed through the roots and these were below the soil and the fertilizer had to dissolve and make it's way thru the soil where the roots would grab it as it passed.. etc.. She simply had no idea. And why would she have? k
