Robert Mustard

New Port Richey, Florida

“A Camera Is No Substitute For Vision”

I had a strong interest in photography from an early age, and while I studied English literature at Ohio State University (B.A., M.A.), I was continually drawn to the work of favorite photographers (at that time Diane Arbus and Gary Winogrand). I took an undergraduate photo class and learned to process black and white film and make prints. After teaching Freshman English for ten years, I returned to school and majored in Advertising Illustration at Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara. From there I assisted many photographers in Los Angeles for two years before starting my own commercial studio in 1989.

Shadows

I always look for strongly graphic elements in the subjects I want to photograph. I look for strong primary colors, background negative space, and a subject with some sort of story. It doesn’t have to be a narrative story, but it has to convey an atmosphere or feeling. Sometimes just a beautiful graphic is enough. I prefer to shoot from a tripod simply because the tripod offers more control. You can slow shutter speeds down, and there is less chance of the subject being soft even at faster shutter speeds. I like the fact that a tripod slows you down and makes you think harder about what you’re trying to accomplish. Of course, using a tripod is not always possible, and many of the shots here are handheld shots, but if at all possible I use the tripod.

Because I pay a lot of attention to shutter speed and aperture, I usually keep the camera in its full manual mode. Unless the subject is backlit, I also try to use a handheld incident meter instead of relying on the camera’s metering system. The incident meter will tell you how much light is falling on the subject and give you a reading based on the light hitting the subject in the scene. A correctly exposed scene is often drained of all drama because the camera’s meter is trying to compensate for a dark background. The “correct” exposure is not always the best exposure. I have learned to see the subject the way I want it to look in the photograph, which is often not the way it looks in reality. The incident meter helps with this assessment. While the meters in today’s cameras are very sophisticated, they are no substitute for your vision and how you see the subject and want it to be seen in your photograph.

While I have good equipment (especially lenses), I try hard not to fall into the trap of thinking that good photography is about good equipment. Good photographs are the result of the photographer’s knowledge of light, not so much the result of how expensive his or her camera is. I once assisted a very successful photographer in Los Angeles who said “Equipment is not the answer.” That has always stuck with me. I try to think outside the box. I think hard about how the subject would look when shot with different lenses and at different apertures.

Red Gate

The shot of the red gate, for example, was shot with a 300mm lens on a tripod about twenty feet from the subject. This focal length produced the foreshortening that gave the gate a look I couldn’t get with anything else. This shot was taken right at sunset when the light is especially warm and made the red in the gate really pop. Because light and how it behaves is so infinitely complex, we will never exhaust its possibilities. I learn something new every time I shoot, and I always try to remember that there are new things to be learned. Many, many times I have gone into the studio thinking a shot would take one or two days only to still find myself shooting five days later. The shot of the martini glass was like that, with many problems to be overcome before I finally arrived at the simple, graphic shot I was seeing in my mind’s eye.

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Rob Mustard is retired from teaching, and from professional photography. He lives in El Segundo, California, with his wife, Deborah, and these days finds his time consumed by riding bikes, playing guitar and taking pictures  for fun, not profit.

All work copyright 1990-2010, Rob Mustard.
For contact information, see http://www.robmustard.com