Dаz
// 52_Eleven // Red eye
Just lately I feel like I've been trawling out the same photos, and had no inspiration to do anything other than line up against a blank wall and fire off a load of frames until something vaguely interesting occurs.
It's weird because in some ways the last few weeks have been a lot of fun photographically - helping Stu with his sleep apnoea series has been a blast, and getting the D80 was also cool.
I don't think this has translated into what I'm shooting or posting though.
I always envisaged my 52 Weeks to be a reaction to what I felt were shortcomings of my 365: too many head and shoulder shots (as Ryan rightly pointed out last week!), too much standing in front of a blank wall and aimlessly shooitng until I got something I thought I could manipulate into something cool. But my 52 Weeks has slipped into familiar territory lately, when the first few of weeks felt fresh to me.
I know that my main problem is an obsession that every shot has to be perfect. Sharp, perfectly exposed, perfect lighting, the works.
What made me realise that none of this matters was a book that my dad bought me about digital photography. Reading through and looking at the shots in the book made me realise that actually most of my favourite shots in there were documentary style photos, or off the cuff shots that capture a moment. Looking at them made me realise that you don't always have to make sure the sky is a perfect blue and the clouds white and fluffy (I know what I mean by that), it's more important to capture that moment in time, a look or an action, than for it to be perfectly exposed and lit.
I realised that I was stunting my own creativity and decreasing the chances of me ever learning to spot a good photo or have the reactions to see a shot and capture it.
Another upside to reading through the book was to highlight my incredible lack of technical knowlede - instinct is an absolute key factor is photography, no doubt about it, but an understanding of the theory, as I now see, is just as fundamental.
I'd love for this to be more than a hobby, and I could almost see, if I grew a bigger set of balls and learnt some theory, that this could happen. I'm not talking about a career change (cos there's no career to change) but I'd love to feel confident enough to shoot a few weddings maybe, or sell some prints or something. But to have that confidence I need to understand how it works, and I know I don't have that knowledge. Yet. Maybe never. But I might pull my finger out enough and enough might stick that I get there. To be creative for a living would be amazing, Nathan is like a kinda role model for me in this respect. The dude's awesome, but he's learnt it from the basics up. He's earned it.
So. That was a big, long, not very well informed, protracted and probably mostly unintelligable rant. I needed to say it though. Basically, I want to persue this as more than a hobby. Before I do this I need to [a] learn some stuff so I know how my photos happen and [b] get some nuts and get out there and shoot more people and stuff. I'm so fed up of SPs (Brad put it so much better in this shot), but then without them I wouldn't ever have anyone to shoot. So I'm sticking with them.
And this photo? Me and my dad thought it'd be hilarious if I used these tomatoes as eyes . . . and it is! Ha ha!
(It is meant to look like this by the way - I like it and hate it in equal measure).
And also, you can now find me on RedBubble, flogging stuff. I figured, why not?
Strobist info: SB600 directly behind camera (light stand on kitchen table) at full power bounced off the ceiling.
// 52_Eleven // Red eye
Just lately I feel like I've been trawling out the same photos, and had no inspiration to do anything other than line up against a blank wall and fire off a load of frames until something vaguely interesting occurs.
It's weird because in some ways the last few weeks have been a lot of fun photographically - helping Stu with his sleep apnoea series has been a blast, and getting the D80 was also cool.
I don't think this has translated into what I'm shooting or posting though.
I always envisaged my 52 Weeks to be a reaction to what I felt were shortcomings of my 365: too many head and shoulder shots (as Ryan rightly pointed out last week!), too much standing in front of a blank wall and aimlessly shooitng until I got something I thought I could manipulate into something cool. But my 52 Weeks has slipped into familiar territory lately, when the first few of weeks felt fresh to me.
I know that my main problem is an obsession that every shot has to be perfect. Sharp, perfectly exposed, perfect lighting, the works.
What made me realise that none of this matters was a book that my dad bought me about digital photography. Reading through and looking at the shots in the book made me realise that actually most of my favourite shots in there were documentary style photos, or off the cuff shots that capture a moment. Looking at them made me realise that you don't always have to make sure the sky is a perfect blue and the clouds white and fluffy (I know what I mean by that), it's more important to capture that moment in time, a look or an action, than for it to be perfectly exposed and lit.
I realised that I was stunting my own creativity and decreasing the chances of me ever learning to spot a good photo or have the reactions to see a shot and capture it.
Another upside to reading through the book was to highlight my incredible lack of technical knowlede - instinct is an absolute key factor is photography, no doubt about it, but an understanding of the theory, as I now see, is just as fundamental.
I'd love for this to be more than a hobby, and I could almost see, if I grew a bigger set of balls and learnt some theory, that this could happen. I'm not talking about a career change (cos there's no career to change) but I'd love to feel confident enough to shoot a few weddings maybe, or sell some prints or something. But to have that confidence I need to understand how it works, and I know I don't have that knowledge. Yet. Maybe never. But I might pull my finger out enough and enough might stick that I get there. To be creative for a living would be amazing, Nathan is like a kinda role model for me in this respect. The dude's awesome, but he's learnt it from the basics up. He's earned it.
So. That was a big, long, not very well informed, protracted and probably mostly unintelligable rant. I needed to say it though. Basically, I want to persue this as more than a hobby. Before I do this I need to [a] learn some stuff so I know how my photos happen and [b] get some nuts and get out there and shoot more people and stuff. I'm so fed up of SPs (Brad put it so much better in this shot), but then without them I wouldn't ever have anyone to shoot. So I'm sticking with them.
And this photo? Me and my dad thought it'd be hilarious if I used these tomatoes as eyes . . . and it is! Ha ha!
(It is meant to look like this by the way - I like it and hate it in equal measure).
And also, you can now find me on RedBubble, flogging stuff. I figured, why not?
Strobist info: SB600 directly behind camera (light stand on kitchen table) at full power bounced off the ceiling.