Good bit on the thinking end of photography

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

from slate

http://www.slate.com/id/2279659/pagenum/all/#p2


Pretty much mirrors what I tell all young photographers who ask me questions.

[Celebration]

1. Interesting!

To me, the main point of photography as a hobby is to enjoy oneself. So, combining it with other interests helps enhance the experience. For me, it means being outdoors, looking at beautiful sights, finding things, etc. The setup, the technicals, or even slow vs. fast, don't matter as much as everything else. Oh, I love beautiful days and sunshine too! I love to be able to move around. So, I do photography, mostly, that fits in with all of the above. That makes me not care so much about doing indoor still life photography, even though I appreciate it aesthetically. Outdoor macro is okay, for me, or an outdoor still life.

I like both fast and slow photography. Flying birds are my favorite thing to shoot, and fast photography is about the only way to go with those. You just get a lot of throwaways with those. Fortunately I finally have a new camera with continuous shooting, five frames per second I think. So I do expect to get a lot better results with it. With landscapes, well, I love those too, and it definitely is slow. Then one has to pay attention to composition, lighting, etc. Going to a zoo?? Maybe once in a blue moon. Sitting in a blind in the backyard?? Eh, again, okay if it is not a habit. But that is just me.

So, I don't really think that slow shooting is the only way to go. It really depends on the subject, and what one enjoys. The guy with the expensive setup for birds intrigues me. It is both slow and fast. The setup and rig itself is a matter of a lot of preparation, but the shooting is fast. I really absolutely love the idea of seeing things later in the photo that you miss when you take the photo. I will say that I rarely saw fish in birds' mouths when they fly, until I saw the photo. Now my eye is trained a little bit better, and sometimes I notice that. What I wouldn't like that much is sitting in a blind.

One thing I would love to be able to do better is cityscapes, and urban photography. There is plenty of it around here. The problem is that it is a bit farther from my abode than various parks. That would be pretty "slow", but it would still involve moving around outside. There is an amateur photographer here whose work I greatly admire, and he does mostly urban stuff. He has a wonderful eye, and I have no idea how he finds the things he does. Another problem, for me, is that some of the things and places he goes seem unsafe. As an example he took a photo of a beware of the asbestos sign. Then there are the gang signs...........so I haven't totally committed myself to that.

The end result is nice, but the process, and enjoying the process, is the most important thing. I think about this a lot. I'm not going to fool around much with things that don't seem fun, just because I might like the result.

Thanks for posting this, because it helped me formulate my thoughts. I'm really less of a photographer than just someone that likes to wander around outside.

[alfredo]

2. I become a hunter. There's a focus, an altered state.

I can still feel the good "hunts" when I think back on them.