In this day of affordable digital cameras or even cellphone cameras and instagram, it’s easy to become a photographer and share your photographs with the world in a matter of seconds.
But for multi-awarded photographer Eli Reed, there’s no shortcut for learning how to take good pictures.
“Take a lot of pictures,” he advised amateur photographers in a forum he conducted at Foundation University last week. “You don’t learn this stuff by not taking pictures.”
Reed, 66, a member of the Magnum Agency and clinical professor of photojournalism at the University of Texas in Austin, was in Dumaguete for a week to shoot photos around Negros Oriental with best friends Luis Sinco, a photojournalist at the Los Angeles Times and Armando Arorizo of Prensa Internacional.
“If you’re a photojournalist, you also have to read a lot–you have to be aware of all these fine stuff,” he advised Dumaguete’s budding photographers. “Social networking thing is great but you still have to do the work–you have to make the pictures and put the sentences that work together,” he said. “If you don’t have that, you just have a bunch of mud thrown at the screen–it doesn’t mean anything.”
In the three-hour forum, Reed showed a collection of his photos which won for him multiple awards and which appeared in appeared in National Geographic, Time, Newsweek, US News & World Report, the New York Sunday Times Magazine, Men’s Journal, Sports Illustrated, Vibe, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, GQ, Fortune, Oggi, Marie Claire, and the London Sunday Times.
His images have also been featured in projects such as, “Beirut: City of Regrets,” “Rwandan Refugees in Tanzania,” and “Lost Boys of Sudan.”
The challenge for a photographer, he said, is to take a photo in a way that no one has ever seen before. “There’s always something going on that’s interesting,” he said.
Born in 1946 with a curiosity about the world and a passion for art, Reed started drawing with the burnt ends of matchsticks and whatever he could get his hands on. “I was interested in everything around me and watching TV news was like watching someone living next door to me.“
It is this ability to connect with his fellow human beings that make Eli’s photos stand out. “Eli’s photos are about a human being trying to communicate his humanity to the rest of the world,” said Luis Sinco.
As Reed explained in the forum, “Everywhere I go, I tend to look at people as me. It allows me to see that we’re part of a big family. If you understand that, you learn to appreciate people doing stuff that you cannot imagine. I listen not just with my ears but with my eyes and my heart.”
Reed’s advice for photographers who are looking for a camera: “Don’t worry about the camera. Get any camera that works –have fun with your camera. If you don’t get a good photo don’t blame the camera.”
