Direction

So, I think I figured something out about where I am as a photographer, and what will get me to more consistently better photos. My goal in photography is to bring someone as close to a specific moment as possible. For sports photographers, maybe it is when the game winning touchdown was scored. For nature photographers when an animal is peacefully unaware of your presence, and does something incredible. For me, it is the moment when I am looking at something sad, and I think “that is beautiful.” Every moment that passes between that moment, and when it is captured, something is lost in translation. When I am editing, I usually find the first photo I took of a series, is my favorite.

So, where does that leave me? Needing a lot of work :). I still need to master camera settings so I get correct exposure and focus on the first photo. I still am taking first shots with aperture, focal length, and exposure settings from different light/style and get a dark first exposure (I will say the mirrorless exposure preview has improved this dramatically, I can see my photo is black 😆). Next, I need to work on framing and paying attention to the whole frame. I take photos where the first shot includes pieces of an unrelated building, or something that throws off the mood of the photograph (examples below). I am sure the list will increase in length as I improve.

I was really excited about this abandoned swing set, but when I started to edit I could see the top of a building and a car in the photo. I got tunnel vision on the swing set and wasn’t aware of everything in the frame. This would have been improved if I would have taken the photo from a lower angle.

Again, I was excited about the log and was trying to get an interesting perspective with the dam, and I didn’t pay any attention to the bridge. If I had payed attention to the bridge I could have taken a step back and toward the dam, then I would been able to frame the bridge, the dam and the log.

I need to figure out how to more consistently find those moments of perspective. I took a photograph this evening and it is one of my favorite (despite suffering from one of the problems listed above). The thing that brought it together? I saw two interesting features of the scene (maybe the most interesting), how they were interacting, and I tried to capture it.

“Direction” - My first named photograph! I have taken enough pictures at this point to feel like I actually know what I am trying to improve on, and that is exciting.

And… I have read it a couple times… BRING. YOUR. CAMERA. EVERYWHERE. I love this photo, and I love that my iPhone let me capture it, but I really, really, wish I had my canon. I can recreate this another day and it will be beautiful, but that is somehow less satisfying.