On the history of photography

Fissures, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

I took on Friday quite a few photographs, also city landscapes of streets, buildings and people, but unfortunately those didn't work out, as I was a bit tired at that point already. When I took the photographs I felt that there was something in them, but later I realized the composition didn't work, or then there was some blur due to the long handheld exposure.

In any case, later I continued reading the book "The Genius of Photography", which has proven to be quite slow going. The book is good, but it is so packed with information that I'm not able to read more than a dozen pages in a day.

The history of photography is certainly fascinating, there is quite a lot of things I didn't know, for example the relations of certain famous photographers to each other (Atget, Evans, Capa etc.). How they were influenced or were influenced, and how the field of photography developed into a unique form of expression.

A couple of weeks ago I decided to join The Finnish Association of Nature Photographers, partly because of being interested in the subject and wanting to support it, partly for the selfish reason of getting a nice magazine as a part of the membership. I'm not sure when I'm really a "nature photographer", but at least I have now some kind of reference point for my photography.

The photograph here is from Friday, once again a tree and a sunset. I have several times looked at these trees and tried to make photos of them, but not really succeeded. This was the best so far. "If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough," as Capa said.