You and Camera Move

Slumdog Millionaire cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle offers 10 tips for those entering his profession. This one is about photography. bbc

Quote Mantle

3. Move both yourself and the camera

Whether you are working in photography or film, it's about contrast, luminance, density, exposure all of these things are things you should know about it.

I've become known for movement. Why and how you move the camera is an essential part of our job. It took me the first two years of my four years at film school to understand how to give up that control of the static image and maintain some other kind of variation of the word control of a moving image.

Where you move both yourself and things move in the frame and the light changes, that's the big, difficult jump. Controlling the light, for the fraction of a second that the picture demands it is so important.

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If you want a still with composition you have to move the camera to get it and that means you move too.

Don't think a zoom lens is going to help. It changes perspective, a tiny part of composition.

Don't look through the viewfinder, look at it. Move your eye around the frame. Move yourself. Get the light and angle right. Then wait for the moment. Snap.