A few years ago, having bought my first digital camera, I realised there was much more to taking a photograph than just “point and shoot” and I started to consider the machinations of photography a bit more seriously,
I read up on things like exposure, aperture, f-stops and other things with odd names to make sure I had a good grasp of the basics. Then I bought a semi-SLR camera with the aim of practicing with that so when I “upgraded” to a full SLR I’d be getting the most of all the capabilities. Well that and the semi-SLR camera was much cheaper.
So, armed with my Canon Powershot S3 I started taking photos “properly”. I was mindful of the lessons I had learned, and spent a lot of time experimenting to better understand all the capabilities my camera had. I took a lot of photos, I mean A LOT of photos, and I reckon I was happy with about 5% of them which was fine as that was all part of learning how to take better photographs.
Composition is, it seems, my strength. I have a good eye for what should be in a shot to get the best image. The rest of the techniques and technological faffing is where I start to lose my way a little and that’s largely due to a lack of understanding of the basics, no matter how many ways I tried to learn them (how DO you make the water tumbling over rocks in a waterfall look all blurry?). And the more I had to try and learn, the less fun it got and the less interested I became.
I tried a few ways to counter this, buying new lens for the camera to give me something to experiment with, but ultimately it seems to be doomed.
Yup, in fitting with every profiling technique I’ve ever tried, I stay true to one aspect of my personality.
I’m quickly bored and easily distracted.
[insert “ohhh shiny” joke here]
For a while I really enjoyed wandering around with my camera, finding hidden alleyways and forgotten spaces, taking photos of odd things and capturing tiny fragments of beauty as I came upon them. Unfortunately I started to realise that I enjoyed the wandering but not the “which feckin’ setting would be best for this” bit when it came to actually taking the photos and so, slowly, I stopped doing such things.
It’s also not easy to carry around a ‘big’ camera all the time and, invariably whenever I needed it (that is, I spotted something that I thought would make a good/interesting photo) I didn’t have it with me.
So I bought a second camera, a Ricoh Caplio R7, just so I had something smaller for ‘snapshots’ and random photo opportunities. I don’t carry it with me all the time though, but I do use it far more than I did my ‘big’ camera.
Add in the constant march of technology and it’s time for me to revisit WHY I take photos and match the equipment to my approach. It’s telling that, since finding a couple of iPhone apps that do a good job of processing photos on the handset directly, I’m far more likely to use it as my ‘snapshot’ camera these days and given it’s only a 2MB camera, that in itself suggests I’m more interested in the content of the photo than any of the things the purists would worry about.
The upshot of all this is that I’m selling my Canon Powershot S3 and the accompanying lens. The Ricoh (which was used for the photo in the post below) is good enough for my needs at the moment, and I’m happy to rely on my iPhone for the occasional snapshot.
This should free me to get back to enjoying photography, back to letting my eye wander and capturing those instants and scenes that stick in my mind.