Thursday, February 28, 2008

Photography: Doing Things Backwards

Confession time: I'm doing all this photography stuff backward, kind of.

I spent several years happily running around with my camera, just taking pictures and picking up bits and pieces about composition here and there. It would be inaccurate to say that I am self taught, since with three painters in the family, there is inevitably some conversation about color, composition, light, and other pictorial elements.

However, I don't know a whole lot about the actual camera, at least, not yet. I've been using the "Auto" setting for 99% of my pictures. And, mostly, it's worked.

But lately... Lately I've been getting antsy. You know--auto is wonderful, but it's also really, really bossy.

Ever tried to take a picture of a dragonfly while the camera kept insisting that the twig it was sitting on was more important? Or wanting to get blur *on*purpose* rather than simply hoping that the motion will turn out right? Or taking a night-time photo while the camera says there is not enough light? Trust me, it's frustrating.

So, I am now finally taking a photography class, learning more about composition and learning how to take charge of my camera.

It's great fun!

It's also taking time and energy. That is one reason that I'm dialing back on my ArtID account for now--those of you who've been there will notice that instead of forty-some pictures, there are now only about six showing. That's probably not going to be permanent, but for the time being, I need to stop and think about shutter speed & Photoshop, and printing, and matte cutting, and a whole passel of other things, many of which I probably have not even thought of yet. ArtID has helped me see that I really *am* serious about this whole picture-taking thing, but right now, I need to concentrate on learning more about what it is I'm doing.

I'll be posting the odd picture here, though, and I'll try to rotate the display on ArtID with some degree of regularity (Ok, that's not much of a promise, really, more a fancy way of saying "I'll change the pictures sometimes").

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