I was attending a concert the other day. Before the concert began, there are various guitars and keyboards, and of course, the drum set propped up on stage. I’m sitting there looking at the musical instruments, and I started down one of those trains-of-thought. You know those trains – they like to derail and go off in their own favorite direction.
I started thinking about how we photographers generally refer to our cameras, equipment, and software as tools.
We like to say, this lens is just a tool we use to make a photograph. A better lens won’t make a bad photographer suddenly good. That sort of thing.
But as I sat there, I decided a better descriptor might be instrument. I like the metaphor of visual music. It feels right. We blend light and color, and indeed we use the term tone, to create our photographs. They can evoke emotions of calm, serenity, perhaps even love. Or, they can be discordant evoking strong reactions of sadness, pain like the Chernobyl images of Paul Fusco.
Perhaps it’s just words – tools or instruments. But I like the latter. It says more to me about these pieces of software and hardware, and it helps explain why we look for new instruments to help us make our music a bit richer. A great pianist can bang out a wonderful tune on a modest piano, but when she touches the ivories of a well tuned, lovingly built instrument, we’re carried to another place.
