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Take a Shot
I don’t know if it’s because I’m a restless soul or what, but I’m always in search of the hobby. I own a closet full of guitars, two mandolins, an actual stack of penny whistles, etc., and that just scratches the surface of the musical hobby genre. I’ve played inline hockey, I buy a new stunt kite every time I’m at the coast, and there are golf clubs and wood working supplies in my garage. From the best I can tell, my hobby is collecting (and abandoning) hobbies, so let me tell you about the latest!
Photography is the current bee in my bonnet. My vacation this year consisted of a couple of weeks off work interspersed with several day hikes with my kids — hiking being another money sink of a hobby I’m into — and the pictures I took on the first two hikes simply did not convey any of the beauty I saw, the grandeur of the forests through which I walked, or the absolute sense of peace and joy I felt doing such a good, healthy activity with my progeny. Even the iPod pictures my daughter took through the car’s windshield were better than what I was capturing with my long zoom point and shoot camera.
I determined in short order that money must be spent, YouTube videos watched, articles read, and practice taken to learn the skill of crafting photographs that convey my experiences in a meaningful way. I very quickly discovered that it is both easier, and oddly more complicated, than I expected — yet it has been less frustrating and more fulfilling than I could have anticipated.
As an example of my failure that started me on this journey I present this picture of Wallace Falls in the state park where we made our first hike. (click all pics to embiggen)
The exposure is terrible, the framing atrocious, and even GIMP couldn’t turn this mess into a pleasant picture, much less art. The sad part is I took this with a small bit of knowledge about photography. This was a deliberate attempt to produce something worth looking at. Ugh. Since that tragic shot I’ve upgraded gear, relearned the basics, practiced, and hopefully experienced some degree of improvement.
One thing I can’t get over is how technology has utterly changed photography. The basic concepts have not changed in the least — f-stops still matter, depth of field is still a thing, and tripods do what human hands can’t — but the access barrier of continuing monetary expense has been almost entirely eliminated. Each shot now only costs time. Every exposure once cost film and development, but now an amateur can shoot until his battery gives out rather than until his bank account is drained. The downside is that not every shot matters, so hastiness and sloppiness can impede progress, but that cost is well worth the benefit.
This benefit (I think) is helping me get to where I want to be with photography. I have no aspirations of becoming a professional, but I’m already getting shots I think I can be rightly proud of by employing and practicing the basics.
Post and chain.
Not a rose.
Gaming intensity.
Island afternoon.
This last one is an example of accidentally getting it right. On Monday The Princess Prawn left home. Today she’ll have the quick elopement ceremony to make things honest, but after the car was loaded I asked for one last shot of the happy couple before they departed. Maybe my own emotions distort my perception, but the shot seems to convey the moment and locks it in amber for me.
Endings and beginnings.
So there it is, photographic Ricochetti. I have an obsession guaranteed to last at least another week. Any others out there trying to capture the world? Tips, tricks, advice? Shots you care to share? This one could be the hobby. Only time will tell.
One more before I go. I took a shot of the literal stack of penny whistles on my desk while I was composing the post. Seems a pity to not include it since it does what I really want — to look at an ordinary thing in an interesting way.
Whistles and dust.
I took these last week at the Bishop’s Garden on the south side of the National Cathedral:
Probably would have helped to have a sunny day, but not bad for a cell phone and someone with no photography training.
The best hobbies are the ones discovered… and the ones eagerly anticipated. I’m digging your photography and looks forward to obtaining a camera worthy of exploring the hobby myself…and the time.
I looked real closely at the D3400 (this year’s model), but went with Canon because my wife has Canon and I can “borrow” her lenses and I already had some familiarity with their products.
I love admiring good photography. Yours are no exception!
This morning I’m going to hit up a park near my house on that’s on the Hood Canal across from the Olympic Mountains to catch the early light. If the darn thing opened before 8 I’d be there for the first rays of the sun.
Fog tried to defeat me this morning, but I had small amount of success with my planned shoot of the Olympic Mountains in the morning sun.
For what it’s worth, I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 4 whose camera has optical image stabilization. Recently, while using it to film my niece playing Dorothy in the ‘Wizard of Oz,’ I learned it can take photos while filming video, a neat touch!
Which orphanage, if I may ask?
KP, did you see the shot I got from the drone when we were at Deception Pass? Complete accident, but I find it stunning, nonetheless.
DCIM100MEDIADJI_0011.JPG
There’s some nice work here, both in the original post and in the comments.
In college, the thing that really boosted my photography to the next level was my photo journalism teacher who would begin each critique with a simple yet damning question: “What did you try to do with this picture, and did you accomplish this task?”
For most people, the answer to that question is “I tried to take a nice picture of my relative, or I thought the sunset was nice so I wanted to take a picture of it,” and usually, we succeed at that goal.
The trick is going to be as I’m sure many of the people here have found when we want to add more to the image than just “take a nice photo.” That’s when the art part of photography starts to bubble to the surface and the REAL fun* begins.
* And by “fun,” I mean hours and hours of time spent in front of a computer, tweaking levels, cropping and adjusting color temperatures, months and months of self-doubt and pity as you wonder if you really should even have the gift of eyesight, much less a camera in your hands, and occasional moments of sheer joy as you manage to compress something meaningful about the world into the viewfinder of your camera.
For me, the real fun is when I capture a shot that I truly love, and don’t care what anyone else thinks. I used to take photos and derive my pleasure from how others perceived it. Now I derive pleasure if I like it. I don’t care what others think. Which is to say, I am happy when others like it, but it isn’t the driving force.
I ask myself the following questions:
Of course I usually ask these in the car after a shoot, but I’m getting there.
That second question was answered perfectly in the picture of the kids. I somehow pushed the shutter button at the exact moment to capture Zachary’s impatience to get on the road and Katie’s joy to step boldly into adulthood. It didn’t hurt that it was about half an hour after sunrise and the light was beautiful.
I will probably struggle to balance this. The post and chain picture is an example of getting the composition about 90% correct (a little of the background is distracting…) It is an interesting look at an ordinary thing. That picture makes me happy regardless of what anyone else thinks of it. I attempted to do something and succeeded. A few other pictures have turned out really nice, but mostly through accident. Getting it right on purpose is fulfilling in a way a happy accident cannot be.
Another piece of unwanted advice: I used to think you had to get it right on the camera. If you did anything afterward, it didn’t count. Getting it right was about knowing how to use the camera. Now, part of the reason I felt that way was beause I learned photography on an old Leica M2 that used to belong to my grandfather. It is 100% manual. I felt that talent and know-how should create the shot. I soon learned that there was still a lot of talent and know how in the editing. There is still art in taking something and applying filters and tweaks in a way that makes me happy.
Same place as last weekend, but a couple of wins in less than optimal conditions.
Best shot of the morning.
Mountains, the reason for going.