Lapwings are bigger, but very erratic...
There have been other photo ops along the way too...
Thursday, 22 April 2010
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...
Lapwings are bigger, but very erratic...
There have been other photo ops along the way too...
Monday, 12 April 2010
Wednesday, 7 April 2010
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!
Saturday, 3 April 2010
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.
Thursday, 1 April 2010
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.
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.