Obsession

Photographing birds in flight has become something I want to get to grips with. The common advice is start with large, slow birds. So I tried to digitise some swallows...

Lapwings are bigger, but very erratic...

There have been other photo ops along the way too...

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Almost but not quite - part 2

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Almost but not quite

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All change

Back in January one place I'd looked at was a featureless snow-covered wasteland, the other day it looked somewhat different. Although it still looked confusingly snowy!

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Bugger the birds

The technical challenge of photographing birds is all well and good, but I'm not a technical sort of photographer and the artistic challenge was missing. So, after failing to pixelise any birds I nipped out to try and make the most of the evening sun. Not with much success, but it was good to be using my eyes to spot compositions again - rather than feathers.

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Sketches

It seems to me that some people are too hasty to delete their less-than-perfect shots. By all means eradicate the absolute garbage immediately, but there are often pics that have something going for them - a play of light, pattern of shapes, facial expression, but don;t come up to scratch on the overall image. Maybe the focus is out or there's something intrusive in teh composition. A nitpicker would get rid of such a shot never to see it again. But why?

Artists use sketchbooks for a number of reasons, not just to make preliminary drawings for a finished work but also, and perhaps most importantly, to practice and hone their skills - technical and observational. A camera is an instrument that can be used both as a sketchbook and as a means for making a finished work.

I look on my duff shots, the ones that have 'something' to them, as sketches. I save them and browse them at intervals to provide an inspiration and insight that I hope I can use instinctively in the future to make better pics. When it comes to seeing pictures I am sure we infuse ideas subconsciously to be released, equally unconsciously, at a later date.

Don't just keep the keepers.

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