Today I attended a workshop for wedding and portrait pros with the excellent duo of Toronto-based Storey Wilkins and Melbourne-based David Williams. I always find these very inspiring, even moving; and I invariably come away energized and with a few good ideas.
There were a few interesting things I noticed today. One, that there is a tremendous need among wedding pros to understand modern flash technologies like e-TTL, i-TTL, CLS, and so on. (And with that, at least, I can help: I am putting on some Advanced Flash workshops for wedding pros in Oakville 10 and 17 December, after I get back from doing the same in Phoenix.)
But the other thought is also very interesting: the consensus seems to be that male photographers are all about gear and technology, and female photographers about feelings.
Is that really true? Is it a binary, black and white issue like that, or more one of slight bias? And even if true, is a generalization like that useful? Do we not all, once we get to a certain level, know the tech bit as well as the feelings bit?
What do you think?
Hi Michael!
I think it’s partly true about males leaning towards gears and technology while females are more about feelings.
I’ve read part of a book called Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. Basically, martians tends to like stuff that helps them achieve something. They like tools and gears. They are like problem solvers. Our problem would probably be “taking a good picture”. How? “Get stuff like flashes, etc.” Or something like “how to do sport photography” -> “you need a fast lens, fast camera”.
I don’t know how many female photographers are into sport photography, but I get the feeling that the majority are males.
Female photographers do get gears, but compared to males, they probably take more photos that convey feelings/passion.
I could be biased but that’s what I think.
Cheers,
Yannick
While on the whole I agree, I keep thinking that (a) males get feelings too, and (b) a feely picture that is under-exposed is no good.
So perhaps it is more a matter of how you get to the result, i.e. from which direction, than what constitutes it, which in both cases must be the same.
It could also be a result of HOW they got into photography in the first place.
Males might’ve been interested in the technical aspects, then jumped on photography and developed an ability for capturing feelings with their handle of the tech. The initial “tech aspect” could be anything from a love of physics to mechanics to problem solving- which photography gave a path to channel it. And unfortunately, there are a lot more males than females in those areas.
Females might’ve been interested in the capture of the feelings, jumped on photography, and then developed an ability to use tech to capture the feelings they were interested in. The “feelings” part could be their ability to empathize, their willingness to share these feelings, etc- things females are (unfortunately) a lot more keen on than males.
And note I said unfortunate to both, because I don’t see really why it should be that way ex ante. But the social inertia of our society just makes it so.
While the reasons are different, they result was similar- both got into photography. And its not that they got into photography because of photography’s tech or “feelings”; its because those paths are what took them there, and therefore why we see them as being more representative.
Paul
PS> Love your blog- cant get enough of it! Please do keep it up!
I think that analysis is probably spot on, Paul.
And thanks for the compliment. A post a day (at least)!
Michael