Bring it on... Get postin... You'll get bored of takin em afore we get bored o starin at em...
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Was there a defining moment in your photography?
- Thread starter Laird Knox
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Bring it on... Get postin... You'll get bored of takin em afore we get bored o starin at em...
I haven’t had one defining moment of epiphany in photography - it’s been too long a road-trip for that - but lots of little moments along the way. If I had to choose one moment it would be when I decided to shoot with a tripod. The change came about when I started shooting stock pix, nearly ten years ago; I found that my hand-held shots weren’t always sharp enough. I was using a Nikon D200 at the time with an 18-70 kit lens, and couldn’t afford to upgrade my equipment.
The tripod got the best out of a budget lens and, incidentally, slowed me down. I’d put the camera on the tripod, lock onto the chosen composition, then stand back, cable release in hand, to watch the light change and to see what would happen within my chosen rectangle. I tried to empty my mind: no expectations, no time limit. Instead of chasing pix, I let them come to me. If that meant waiting for an hour or two, that was fine. Slowing down had another unexpected result: I came away with more saleable pix than when I used to rush around. Hmmm…
My passion is light, and I never get bored with watching it change. It’s not binary (on/off, light/shadow); there are so many gradations and subtleties that you could revisit the same place every day, and the pictures would always be different. Light really is what photography is about - more than any software solution or PP - and that realisation is, I’d say, the most important point on the photographic learning curve.
With a new camera (Nikon 610) and a better quality lens (24-70), I shoot ‘people pix’ handheld. But for static scenes I still prefer the tripod (the only difference is that a little ‘clicker’ has replaced the cable release)…
The tripod got the best out of a budget lens and, incidentally, slowed me down. I’d put the camera on the tripod, lock onto the chosen composition, then stand back, cable release in hand, to watch the light change and to see what would happen within my chosen rectangle. I tried to empty my mind: no expectations, no time limit. Instead of chasing pix, I let them come to me. If that meant waiting for an hour or two, that was fine. Slowing down had another unexpected result: I came away with more saleable pix than when I used to rush around. Hmmm…
My passion is light, and I never get bored with watching it change. It’s not binary (on/off, light/shadow); there are so many gradations and subtleties that you could revisit the same place every day, and the pictures would always be different. Light really is what photography is about - more than any software solution or PP - and that realisation is, I’d say, the most important point on the photographic learning curve.
With a new camera (Nikon 610) and a better quality lens (24-70), I shoot ‘people pix’ handheld. But for static scenes I still prefer the tripod (the only difference is that a little ‘clicker’ has replaced the cable release)…
