Photo impressionism

Fence corner, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

I browsed some photography books at Amazon.com, and it was especially interesting to read through the comments and reviews. As an example, some books by Freeman Patterson were heavily criticised, because "the photos were not inspirational". Well, I can sort of understand that, because Patterson's photography is not "easy", but for me his examples have been eye-opening. Many other books seemed to be "a lot of promise, little delivery" despite tens or even hundreds of glowing reviews.

One of the books had an excellent quote: "What are you trying to say with this photo?" (Or something similar.) That is an excellent question to pose when taking a photo. I must admit that I usually don't have a faintest idea, not when taking a photo or when looking at the result later. I'm not a very good photographer, apparently. Well, at least there is a lot to be learned.

I tried again this night some "photography while walking", using shutter speeds between 1/2 and 8 seconds. I took over 100 photos, of which only one or two showed any promise. This is very difficult way of doing photography. But I must admit that it is also quite fun, and all images were interesting to look at, although they did not succeed as photos.