It’s Okay to Not Be a Technical Photographer
Automatic for the people
Back when I started out in photography, at the stately age of 9, the technical barriers to my debut as a photographer were non-existent. That was because my first camera was a Kodak Instamatic.
The smartphone camera of its day, Instamatics were cheap and incredibly easy to use. They were small and plastic and had precisely two controls - a shutter button and a lever to advance the film roll. You held the Instamatic up your face, squinted through the little plastic viewfinder, pressed the shutter button and advanced the film. After 24 shots, the roll would be full and you could eject the film cassette from the camera and take it to the chemists to be processed or stick it in a free-postage envelope and send it off to Bonusprint.
The Instamatic had a fixed-focus lens with an aperture of about f/11, give or take a stop, which meant that literally everything 1.5m in front of you would be in focus. Or, you know as focused as a plastic 43mm lens, with optics only marginally better than a Christmas Cracker novelty toy, ever could be. If you wanted to photograph someone in low light you could stick a little disposable flash cube on the top, but other than that the only way to take better photos with that camera was to get off your arse and find better conditions.
In hindsight, Instamatics were a kind of analog Instagram for the polyester generation - a way that ordinary people, with literally zero technical training could take a photograph and capture a memory, a scene or an event. Looking back, that little plastic camera taught me something that no amount of technical training ever could. It wasn't about perfect exposure or tack-sharp focus or having the latest gear. It was about seeing something memorable and capturing it.
So here's a radical thought: what if being technically proficient isn't actually important?
There is a metric shit-tonne of gate-keeping in photography. I don’t suppose it’s that different to any other hobby with a technical element to it, but it’s still frustrating because it discourages people who might otherwise really enjoy it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with revelling in the technical minutiae of photography if (like me) that’s what floats your boat, but it’s also possible to be a good photographer and not give a flying fuck about edge sharpness at 400% zoom and cross-referencing MTF charts.
Gate-keeping in photography takes many forms and I suspect that most of us have heard the greatest hits at one time or another:
Real photographers shoot fully manual
Real photographers shoot full-frame
Real photographers get it right in-camera
I’m sure you can think of a few others.
This kind of gate-keeping has a negative affect on any hobby, but it’s super-discouraging when you’re a newcomer to photography.
There’s this perception, created by a certain kind of photographer, that the technical stuff is as important as the end result, but more than that - that extreme technical mastery is the only route to photographic excellence. Well I’m here to say bollocks to all that - if you want to shoot in full auto because that’s how you enjoy taking photographs, then I say go for it. Shooting in full auto is preferable to not shooting at all.
There is a strong argument to be made for completely ignoring the technical guff at the start and simply going out and taking photographs.
Fuck it - put everything on full auto - aperture, exposure, ISO, white balance and focus - let the camera decide it all. Just find that auto setting on the dial and leave it there until such time as natural curiosity gets the better of you.
I’ve seen it time and again - the technical stuff has a habit of knocking all the fun and the enthusiasm out of photography for beginners. They become so obsessed with following the rules from the chin-stroking gurus that the process becomes marginally less enjoyable than watching politicians dance on TikTok.
Expose to the right, check your hyper-focal distance, switch to a prime - all the sorts of things that more experienced photographers, well-meaning as they might be, say to beginners. How about ‘have fun’ instead - or ‘photograph what catches your eye’.
Once someone has caught the bug they may well ease into the more technical side of things - curiosity may lead them to discover long exposure techniques, bracketing and the 500 rule. But equally - it might not.
What if they just want to keep using auto? Is a photo somehow less ‘good’ because it was shot using settings that the camera chose? Is there some law that states that you’ve got to be operating in full manual by the end of your first year? What if, actually, auto is fine? What if torturing yourself with technical terms and technical techniques is a sure-fire way of killing the enthusiasm if you’re more artist than geek?
Now I know what you’re thinking - Andy, my old mate - that’s very well meaning of you, but what about those times when full auto fails to deliver? To which I say, what about the times that manual fails to deliver? Even the most experienced photographers fuck up their shots - and, let’s be brutally honest here - manual often gets in the way too.
You might be faffing about setting aperture, focus, exposure, ISO and white balance while a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shot-of-a-lifetime passes you by. Those amazing moments that photographers experience on a rare basis are often stressful enough to capture because we all hold ourselves to a high standard. But is dicking about with the dials actually compounding that stress?
Many famous photographers are happy to let the camera take the strain. For instance, the famous New York street photographer Bill Cunningham once said, “I let the camera do the work. I just want to be there when it happens.”
One of the arguments for leaving full auto behind is that learning what the dials do will make you a better photographer. That once you understand how aperture works in terms of the amount of light hitting a sensor and its impact on the focal plane, you become a ‘better’ photographer. That knowing what exposure to choose in any given circumstance makes you aware of the myriad possibilities available to you - and you become a ‘better’ photographer. That knowing when it’s advisable to crank the ISO up because you can’t manage the light with aperture or exposure alone - makes you a ‘better’ photographer.
All of those things can be true - and it still doesn’t matter that someone ignores the lot and shoots in full auto forever. And while we’re on the subject, you know what else is a-okay? Priority modes.
The argument that pros only shoot in full manual is somewhat weakened by the inclusion of the priority camera modes on even the highest of high-end cameras. You know why the camera manufacturers keep including them? Because they’re astonishingly useful. And if we’re going to continue the argument that full manual is something to aspire to, then priority modes are, at the very least, a gateway drug.
In reality, aperture and exposure priority modes are genius. Decide what’s most important in a scene - is it depth of field and the focal plane - or is it the speed at which you take the shot? I’ve earned a good living from landscape photography over the last 20 years or so and I can categorically state that 90% of my shots were taken in aperture priority mode.
When someone’s learning the art of photography, stressing about manual settings can be a huge impediment to progressing. I strongly believe it’s far more important to just get out there and shoot.
Photography relies on highly technical bits of kit - not just the cameras, but tripod heads, gimbals, intervalometers, ND filters, extension tubes, l-brackets, Speedlights etc etc. But you don’t need to know about any of that when you’re starting out - all you need to know is that photography is about moments, not metadata. It’s about captures, not kit.
Photographs freeze photons of light present at a location at that specific fraction of time in a sequence that is utterly unique and will never, ever occur again even till the heat death of the universe in 10¹⁰⁰ years.
The moment is what is important, not the kit. And if the best way for you to capture that moment is in full auto mode, then bloody brilliant - go for it, legend.
Here's my advice: embrace auto mode if that’s what works for you, and remember that there are no rules, despite what the gatekeepers would have you believe.
When someone stops to look at a photograph, they do so because of the qualities inherent in the image in the frame, not because they’re loving the f-stop the photographer chose. They just felt something - and ultimately that's the only technical specification that actually matters.