Nathanael Gassett Photography

Photography is the art of capturing images on a plate that chemically interacts with light or, as is common practice nowadays, with a digital chip. There are many subgroups or fields of photography, like:
• Fashion photographer
• Nature- or wildlife photographer
• Press photographer
• Sports photographer
and many more. But photography is also very suitable as a hobby. As a matter of fact: very few people go on vacation without bringing at least one camera. Why? So they can look back at the beautiful places they’ve been, and the good time they had there. Or just to show others where you’ve been. It won’t be surprising that there is a difference in the type of gear that a professional photographer uses, and the type that’s suitable to take on vacation.

What gear to bring if you’re a travelling photographer?

The obvious first thing you’ll need is a proper camera. There are many, and which one you choose depends on your budget and personal preferences. But assuming you have a camera, you’ll also need:
- Various lenses, so that you’ll be ready for beautiful sceneries as well as close ups of strange insects or flowers.
- Enough memory, because it would be a shame if you can’t take any more pictures before the vacation is over. If you bring a laptop, you could also transfer the photos from your camera to it, so that there is always enough free memory left on the card.
- A tripod. If you really want quality pictures, and can cope with the burden of bringing one. (there are small ones available)
- Cleaning tools/wipes, for optimal results.
- A proper bag, that protects the camera and is comfortable to wear/carry.

Photography on vacation: the pro’s
After your vacation, if you made a lot of photos:
- It’ll not only be easier to remember where you’ve been but also things that happened and the feelings you had will come back to you when you take a look at the photo’s you took;
- You could select a few (as many as you like) and have them printed in book form;
- You could burn them on a cd (and write the name of the place and the date on it). Now you can lend it to family or friends that are interested in seeing more that just a selection that you probably showed them already.
Long story short: photography and vacations go really well together. You don’t just take a picture, you immortalize moments, feelings and memories.

Before photography was invented, only rich people could afford a portrait of themselves, painted or sculpted. This changed in 1850, the photographer took over the domain of the portraits. It is a fun fact that the scientific knowledge of photography was available already a long time before the invention; the relevant optics and chemistry were well known. Although the painters where excellent at their job, they felt threatened by photography. In the early days of photography, painters started to make photographs to help them in their pre-painting studies. For example, they took pictures of individual people they had to paint in a group portrait later.

Photography as Art
Far in the 20th century, almost a hundred years after the invention, photography was finally accepted as a true form of art and from then on, there were exhibitions. Analogous to developments in filming, there were two types of photography:
Documentary and press photography: in these forms, the emphasis is capturing/recording the real world and true events.
Staged photography: the photographer captures what he wants to capture. Everything is carefully staged and nothing is left to chance.
Of course many mixed forms came into existence soon, but this is still the most basic division in types of photography. A recent development in exhibitions is that the shots are presented in a monumental size and in limited editions. It’s almost like the photographers want is to forget the time that photos were collected in small albums.

Possibilities in Photography
Since the invention of photography there have been artists testing the possibilities of photography. As the poet Alphonse de Lamartine said “photography is more than an art, it’s a solar phenomenon, in which the artist works together with the sun”. However, artists kept searching for new applications of the technique, and many different genres came into existence. Nowadays, photography obtains at least as much attention as painting. Some art critics even say that photography has outgrown the art of painting. What is true at least is that photography provides for many prestigious exhibitions, in many different genres. There are also prizes to be won with photography, like the Pulitzer Price for Feature Photography and the Pulitzer Price for Breaking News Photography. The first one is for (black and white) reportage photography and the second one, as the name suggests, is for the photo that is best at summarizing the most important news fact of the year.