In the Moment
Talk with Tony Sweet about photography and before long the conversation will turn to the subject of jazz. That's because Tony was for 20 years a jazz drummer, and his experience as a musician informs everything he does as a photographer.
"When you're playing, when you're really in the moment, you're reacting instantly and totally to what's going on," Tony says. "You're almost pre-hearing where someone is going, and you're there. You can't be thinking about technique; the moment you think about it, it's too late. It's the same thing in photography. The only way to achieve what you want in photography is to master your craft and then just forget about it. You shouldn't be thinking of how to get what you want; you're just out there doing it."
And when you're doing it, you'll know it. "A lot of photographers have had this experience: they're seeing things, they're getting ideas, they're shooting. Suddenly three hours have gone by. Wondering where the time went means you were in the moment."
What these photographers are doing during the moment is turning imagined images into pictures. "We all see things first in our imagination; they don't exist until we hit the shutter," Tony says. "Something catches your eye—you know that something's there, but you may not recognize the picture immediately. So you start looking harder. The whole process up to the point of taking the picture is in your imagination. Hit the shutter and you make it real."
Tony shoots for stock, calendars, greeting cards, posters and catalogue sales. He is the author two books, Fine Art Nature Photography and Fine Art Flower Photography, and is a regular contributor to Shutterbug magazine. He is also an instructor at outdoor and nature photography workshops and seminars.
His striking images are based on one guiding principle: "Every single thing in the picture space either helps or hurts the image; there's nothing neutral." He demonstrates this in his workshop classes by taking participants to an area he knows well. "They choose their subjects, then they call me over, and I look at the setup. Maybe the composition is too cluttered, or there's a hot spot in the frame, or the camera can be moved to take better advantage of the light. They shoot it that way, and when they see the two pictures side by side they can see the difference. That's the teachable moment—when they see the two photos and recognize what's happened."
While the ideal is to photograph without thinking about technique, all photographers start out doing a lot of thinking. "When you start you're not really sure of what you're doing," Tony says. "You're out in the field, and chances are you're looking for reference points to guide you, traditional scenes you're familiar with, like sand dune ripples or a tree against a blank sky. You're looking for things you recognize, things that will jump out at you. As you get better, and more spontaneous, you stop looking for those things. You empty your mind and start reacting to what's there."
One of the lessons Tony teaches is about time. "Years ago I used to think that you had to be out in the early morning and late afternoon and that was it. Now I agree with [photographer] Freeman Patterson, who said he didn't know what that meant. He said, 'There's only light.' You have a lot of latitude to control the quality of light at any time. I use reflectors and diffusers, or I use backlighting for effect. That's how you get those huge, round dewdrops—by shooting into direct sunlight at high magnification with the lens wide open. I'll shoot into bright sun and blue sky with a 105mm micro lens with maybe a teleconverter or close-up diopter. You need super-high magnification; those dewdrops are pretty small."
Tony tells his workshop students that they'll know they're getting better by the number of frames they're shooting—and the number they're keeping. "The better you are, the fewer frames you shoot," he says. "When you come back from a vacation or a field trip with five thousand pictures, you're not a photographer, you're an editor. The better you get, the fewer pictures you come home with. Fewer frames, more keepers—that's photography."
Tony can chart his own progress by that formula, and by the fact that he's simplified his images and made them ever more elegant and direct. It was a process he didn't have to think about. "It was identical to the music process," he says. "It's knowing what notes to leave out, knowing when to be quiet." He says that the players he most admires are the most lyrical. "What hit me was how clear and direct they were, how simple, in fact. Not in technique, but in their expression and communication."
And the photographers he most admires? "Same thing," he says.
Field Kit
Tony shoots film, with an F6, and digital, with a D2x Digital accounts for 90 percent of his images, and he favors it for his workshops as well. "When I'm working with students, it's so easy to show an example, right on the spot, of what I'm thinking and doing." He carries the F6 because he prefers the way film renders certain subjects—"like sunrises, sunsets, high-contrast lighting, fast-flowing water and scenes with intense reds and oranges."
When we spoke he'd just gotten a 10.5mm f/2.8G ED AF DX Fisheye-Nikkor and was heading to Colorado to do some shooting with it. He was taking along some of his other favorite lenses, of course: the 12-24mm f/4G ED-IF AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor, 35-70mm f/2.8D AF and 80-200mm f/2.8D ED AF Zoom-Nikkors; the 300mm f/4D ED-IF AF-S Nikkor; the 105mm f/2.8D AF Micro-Nikkor and 200mm f/4D ED-IF AF-S VR Nikkor; and an old favorite, the 85mm f/2.8 PC Micro-Nikkor.
Tony routinely carries several reflectors and diffusers of various sizes, the former to direct light onto subjects, the latter to hold it back or soften it. And he carries his own light in the form of SB-80 and SB-800 AF Speedlights and, a recent addition, Nikon's R1C1 wireless close-up Speedlight system.
