By Montague Jacobs, Y11
Recently, the Centre des Arts hosted yet another exposition, albeit at a much smaller scale than the last. This time, student artists ventured into the new task of becoming photographers.
As one of the student photographers, I will express my feelings regarding what we have gained:
To be a photographer… you must wait. You must wait for that perfect lighting, for the perfect surroundings, for the perfect model, for the perfect photo.
Right before we started the project, one of the Arts teachers, Mr. Gilles, gave a speech on waiting. He then got behind the television in the room, crouched down, and said: “This may look strange, but I am seeing this room from an angle no one else has seen before.”
Embodying this advice, I believe that the students participating can confidently say that they had done at some point in time, whether by waiting for that right light outside, bending out of a car window snapping that shot from a different angle, or crouching down behind a TV screen.
Photography is often considered the easiest subset of the arts because there is no creating required, only capturing. The truth is quite the opposite. Yes, it is easy to simply take photos. Photography is not hard to take part in, we all do it. We like to capture moments to look back on. But the truth is that it is hard to get a photo worth showing to the masses. In other aspects of art, small details mean the world; the way you shade, the fine lines and textures that pop out of the painting. But in photography, the detail is all in how long you are willing to wait for the perfect image. It is also about your ability to know what a perfect image is. For a small amount of time, we had the opportunity to experience the feeling of being a photographer. This is not to say that it was easy.
All this is not intended to dissuade you off from taking photos; if anything you should take more! Go out and capture a moment that will disappear the next.
