Steve McCurry (Photographers)

Most people probably don’t know his name, but almost everyone has seen his images. Steve McCurry is probably the most famous for his image of Sharbat Gula, the Afghani refugee girl with the striking eyes. It has been said that this image is the most recognizable photograph in the world. That is saying a lot. While Steve McCurry is easily one of the best photographers and image creators in the world, he is not a household name. I’m sure he doesn’t care.

His color photography has made him a name and won him many accolades throughout his illustrious career. He has had images featured on magazine covers, newspapers, and almost every other medium possible. None of that mattered to Steve. He simply kept shooting.

Coming a long way from his days at Penn State as a cinematography and film-making major, he moved into the realm of still pictures for the college paper and that’s when the shutter bug bit. He honed his skill, and went where many would not dare. The famous image of the Afghani girl was taken when he disguised himself and snuck past the Pakistani border guards and entered Afghanistan just prior to the Russians invading. He photographed as much as he could and then had to smuggle the film out sewn into his clothing.

What makes Steve McCurry’s images so striking is not what he went through to get them, but his ability to capture the ‘soul’ and ‘essence’ of his subjects. Far from portrait-style photography in a studio setting, his photo-journalistic style, composition, color, and ability to snap the shutter at just the right time is what sets his images apart from all the rest.

Even in the digital age, McCurry preferred to shoot film for transparencies (slides). Now that the last of his preferred medium has all but vanished, he captures images digitally with a Nikon. In an interview with Hasselblad, he admitted that he preferred Nikon D3s, but has started to use a Hasselblad HDII-39. With that combination of tools, there is literally nothing McCurry can’t do.

While gear doesn’t make the image, having good tools can certainly help. The key to McCurry’s success as an image creator is volume. Over his photographic career, he has accumulated 800,000 slides. The old adage of “Practice makes perfect” would seem to hold true when it comes to McCurry’s images.

The ability to capture the essence of a person amidst the conflicts of war has set McCurry apart from almost everyone else in the industry. He simply keeps shooting until they forget he is there and a camera is present and eventually, their essence comes out and he captures it. By trying to find and capture the genuine and pure essence of people, McCurry has provided the world with some true works of art.

Some would say that he is good at finding the right people at the right time. They would say he just gets lucky with his timing. If that is the case, then he is one of the luckiest photographers ever. You can’t force people to be ‘real’, you have to wait…patiently, and let yourself disappear into the background until they relax and forget you are there.

It might be impossible to exactly duplicate or replicate McCurry’s images, but he has many lessons to teach every photographer. Even if you can’t find the time or money to attend one of his weekend workshops in New York, everyone can learn by looking at his work. Take the time to analyze his images and then compare them to your own. Find the similarities, the differences, and the things you could have done to improve them. Work on your technical skills so they become second nature, then, when you’re in the field, you can be creative and let yourself ‘disappear’. Who knows, maybe the lessons you learn from McCurry will pay off and we’ll all be ogling your images in the future.

If there is one lesson to learn from McCurry’s story, it is this: Shoot a lot. Remember…don’t take pictures…capture images.