I am over here wading through immense amounts of information related to both artificial light and Photoshop. I don't understand flash, either conceptually or functionally. I am gathering information about flash and studio lighting from several sources, and then trying to figure out what to buy that would work for product photography, real estate photography, and some portraits (maybe only of my own kids, but who knows at this point?). I am hoping a year from now I look back on this time from a place of photographic competence. It is similar to my feelings regarding Photoshop, or deleting photos and cleaning up my Lightroom catalog. I am pretty sure every year, at least, I post about how I am really going to start culling, for real, really, I will. And I never do. And the number of attempts at learning PS... yikes. Many. So I know my declarations and intentions are kind of worthless. I have figured out that the key to learning PS and getting it to stick is to incorporate it into my workflow more often. I take a class, then after the class I don't use it or apply what I have learned to my own photos, and then I lose the tenuous grasp I had on the information in the first place. Pretty much the same with flash- I think I will understand it once I do it. Culling- no clue how to get that problem under control. For now I guess my solution is buying a very large external hard drive. And working towards taking fewer photos in the first place. This week in photos- probably a little dicey. It has been stormy and rainy all week. And last week I inspired myself with my blog post about spending more time on studying and less time on taking new photos and editing those photos. As a result, I have tried to just shoot once and be done for the day, and to spend more time on reading and photography videos and less on editing. Here they are...

Here is my very random post of my thoughts for this week. I am starting to think that my 366 is not a good use of my time. I take a ton of photos every day, especially when it is SPRING and there are all the green and growing things outside in beautiful light. Then I come inside and play around, editing them. I love that part too. The problem- I don't have any time to study and learn new things so I can improve upon my photos and my post-processing. So I never improve, basically. I am not going to quit my 366 or anything, but I have considered pretending that I am shooting film and I can only shoot a single frame for the day. Or even ACTUALLY shooting film with my F100 and then only posting my (probably terrible) results monthly.

Photographers basically take photos that may impress other photographers, but that are often totally lost on the general population.

When photographers say that they are "natural light only", it really means that incorporating artificial light is too hard and they don't want to learn it. There are situations where objectively, the addition of artificial light improves the photo. Or is necessary to execute the photo. I am painfully aware of this because I am at a point where I have to start using artificial light. And I don't even know where to start.

You know how when you are supposed to improve your photography, people will say, "just get out there and shoot!", or whatever it is they say about your first 10,000 frames? That doesn't work when before you can even go out and shoot the new types of subjects, you have research and purchase tons of new equipment. And watch a billion hours of video to figure out what in the world you are even doing. And by the way, I am at probably well over 200,000 frames and the road before me still seems quite long.

I had to order a new tripod and it really sucked. I mean, wow. It was awful. My old tripod was rated to handle 8lbs. Lots of sagging lens issues, which is no surprise. So I read everything on the internet ever published about tripods. There is a classic Thom Hogan piece people often refer to about buying a tripod, and I did buy into that, sort of. Just for the record, after reading everything and obsessing about it, I bought these tripod legs and this ball head. Maybe if you need a new tripod, you should just trust me and my OCD. I know that some people believe the only answer is to buy a tripod from Really Right Stuff, but I just can't spend that kind of money on something so incredibly not fun.

That is probably enough for this week, as I should be doing other things I suppose. Off to read about strobes and seamless paper and posing and wide angle zoom lenses and who knows what else. And in case it wasn't clear from my sort of snarky thoughts this week, I REALLY REALLY love photography. I am so excited, as new things are happening every day. I am incredibly thankful and ready to keep working hard.

week 18 | 366.2016

week 17 | 366.2016

week 16 | 366.2016