Illumination
April of 2020 was an eventful time for me as a photographer. I had begun coming out of my shell if you will. I was armed with a new camera, though still just a single lens, but I wasn’t going to let that stand in my way. I began traveling back and forth through the Carolina mountains, down forest service roads, into less frequented areas, looking for opportunity. Now, admittedly I often met defeat in those travels, but every so often you would find something new and interesting. This stream basin with just the slightest trickle of water running through was one such example of finding something to bring home, and yet it wasn’t until nearly two years later I’ve dug it out of my catalog to present.
Challenge yourself, a simple idea we’ve all heard in some form or another. Get out there, and push it a little further, see what you can do. As a photographer, especially in the beginning of your journey you need to push your limits. The problem is more experienced photographers are vague on the details of what that even means. So, what does it mean? I’ll try and clear up the confusion, and see if I can explain this in a more concise manner.
Composition, fairly straight forward this one. You should go out and develop your idea of composition, finding a scene within a scene so to speak. As photographers we spend our entire careers developing our eye, composing and shooting. Next up, you should begin learning the relationship between your eye, the camera, and the lens. If you look at the details of this photo you’ll note I shot it at f5, at 1/8th of a second at an ISO of 160. I should of been shooting at f8 or even f10, the foreground is out of focus, so failing that I could of focus stacked and given myself a sharp image through the entire field. Now, I wont bore you with the details of manual operation of my camera, but if you want to learn photography you should absolutely spend time learning yours. Now there is more to challenging yourself as a photographer than just this, but this is where I would start if I had to again.
Until Next Time!
