Tuesday, January 25, 2011

When it doesn't go on and on and on...


View, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Flowers, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Glass, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Myyrmanni, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Now that I have one good new battery for the LX3, all is not good. Namely, the asymmetry. Today I had one of the old batteries in the camera, and of course it was good for only a couple of dozen photographs. Well, one learns all the time. Maybe I need to get another new one and get rid of the old ones - or try to be more careful about the batteries.

As you can see from the photographs, I didn't get much out today. Well, I hope tomorrow will be better.

I have been pondering - this has now been going on for several days - the comment by Sven W which made me go "yuck" yesterday. It was this bit: "If I believe I've already taken a similar photo and this one is going to be no better than I don't press the shutter."

I haven't been thinking about this at all, but now that I think, I must admit that sometimes I feel that this is a scene I have seen too many times already. But then I take a photograph anyway, thinking that there is always something different, something to learn, especially when something is familiar. One has to be able to learn to see known things new.

2 comments:

Sven W said...

I agree -- developing our "seeing" skills is essential to improving our photography.

Right or wrong, my approach is to make each image "count". Sometimes I have to rush a snapshot or take several repeats in case a person blinks, but usually I have 10 seconds or more up my sleeve to prepare for a shot. (Or anticipate a shot: I shoot a fair % of candids with people.)

My approach is roughly as follows.

Something will catch my eye: I then try to determine exactly what that "something" is and then how to capture it. If I'm clear in my head about the 'what' and the 'how' and there's something interesting / special / important about the scene, I take a shot.

Of course, sometimes I can't put my finger on exactly what I like about a scene or I have to guess / experiment about the method. But that's good to ... I take the shot and try to figure it out later. The point is I know I didn't have the shot completely worked out.

My current thinking is that by being more deliberate in my picture making I'll improve my seeing skills. You can't photograph everything!

Juha Haataja said...

Thanks, seems a well-grounded approach to photography. I'm nowadays rather intuitive, not thinking much if at all about the situation and the subject. Almost "photograph everything" approach...