Lately I’ve reading about the influence of Bauhaus on modern design. It is everywhere in our daily lives. The philosophy of form following function seems natural to us today but that was not always the case. Someone or rather some group of people had to bring those ideas into industrial practice. Mostly we can thank Bauhaus for that. The school itself only existed from 1919 to 1933 but the brilliant individuals who taught and learned there made the modern world.
What does Bauhaus have to do with a highway overpass? Probably nothing except as you can see it is great example of form and function. The design is purely functional with no extra elements beyond those needed to get the job done. To my eye the spare construction has a certain beauty and modern aesthetic.
It is interesting looking back at these photographs which were made in 2007 using my first DSLR, a Canon 10D. A couple of things come to mind. First, you can get quite a lot of information out of a 6mp RAW file if the exposure is reasonably good. Also, I used a tripod more then and the images are better for doing so. I was way too busy trying to shoot trophy images to recognize those things at the time.
I purchased the 10D from a pro photographer after he bought a new Canon 30D. In truth my envy for his 8mp sensor camera was overflowing. The older 6mp camera seemed quite inferior measured against such a fine photographic tool as the 30D. In hindsight the 10D was nearly perfect for an inexperienced wannabe photographer.
The 10D started me off on a series of Canon gear, 10D, 5D, 40D and 60D. All had good qualities and each improved upon the previous camera. The 5D was something of an outlier, it had the advantages of full frame capture but functionally it reminded me of a clunky oversized 10D. Only the 60D was purchased new and that was a struggle on my shoestring hobbyist budget.
Fortunately it is easy to find excellent used gear one or two generations old. People still think the newest cameras will always make the best photographs. My current Sony A7II 24mp full frame camera is a generation or more behind current standards. It has quite modest specs compared to newer models. Even so, I sometimes struggle to use all the performance it is capable of providing.
After years of practice I finally get it. Photographers make photographs and cameras capture light. That is a good thing to remember when considering new gear.
The source photograph for this completed work was made nearly eight years ago with my first DSLR a Canon 10D. Many of the photographs shot with that 6MP camera still print well up to 16×20 inches. You have to work a little to get good output in color but black and white output does not require much extra work to get acceptable prints.
This is another of my augmented images. It is composited with several textures in the background and blended into the image of the subject. One of the interesting things I’ve discovered while experimenting with compositing is that a small amount of texture often enhances a sense of depth in portraits. Perhaps the noise introduced by overlaying texture at low opacity somehow makes the human face look more natural. Not sure but it seems to work for me.
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