Where Are You in Your Creative Journey?

[cameraclicker]

Without a basic grasp of ISO, aperture and shutter speed, how did she get into a college level photography course?

[Gerbles]

@ mrs woo- have you ever thought about putting a split prism focusing screen in your 7D? I just bought one from katzeye, installed it myself, and  it works really well. The main reason was for macro work and my manual focus 85 1.4. It has no bearing on how autofocus works, which is great. It was $165 and that was with the brightener coating.

[IHF]

Gerbles, can I have a link to that?  I thought the focus screen for the 7d wasn’t interchangeable

 

mrs woo,

thank you, I made a photograph worth sharing today.  Is it spectacular?  lol no, but it’s made just the same, and it was you that helped me get out of my rut 🙂

[Mrs Woo]

@I hate Fauxtography – you made my day!  Thank you!  I love to encourage people in any way.

Also – yes, you CAN replace the focusing screen in the 7D, but only aftermarket.  It voids your warranty, so you might not want to do it until you have owned your 7D for at least a year, and it isn’t designed for replaceable screens like some because of integrated functions with the screen it has.  When Canon designed the 5DIII, they did the same integrated screen of the 7D, which is why the 5DII has replaceable screens from Canon and 5DIII doesn’t.

@Gerbles – yes I read up on them and have gone back and forth on that a lot.  When I talk about it on the Canon forums there are lovers and haters.  Usually discomfort about possibly permanently damaging my camera doing something it wasn’t designed for makes me decide to spend the money for the screen on another accessory, or hold onto the money to buy another lens…

[Mrs Woo]

@camera clicker – I think that she applied for college with photography/journalism as her major and this is her first photography class.  When she described the assignment I had to laugh, because the way she was doing it made it unlikely that what was to be demonstrated to her would make its point.  She said she had an assignment where they had to take pictures of a moving object at different shutter speeds.  I know that that is to demonstrate motion blur and how it is affected by shutter speed.  She asked me for a short cut to make it easier to switch the shutter speed, which is why I asked her if it had to be manual or if she could use shutter priority and if she knew how to use her camera’s built-in light meter.

What made me laugh?  She decided to take pictures of a car driving towards her.  She will not notice that drastic of a change from that perspective.

I guess I can hope she is a fast learner?  We all began sometime.  My father was sent to photography courses for his job and brought home all the lessons and taught them to me, then I learned developing and printing (film days here) from a wedding photographer.  If I had had the option of starting with something like a Canon Rebel, which gives you automated modes where you don’t have to understand the relationship between ISO, shutter speed and aperture, I might have spent quite a long time in those modes myself.  Instead, my dad started me on a Pentax K1000.  Except for its TTL light meter, it really didn’t offer any assistance whatsoever acquiring an adequate exposure.

[cameraclicker]

Well, perhaps while trying to photograph cars driving toward her, she will come to grips with the different auto-focus modes so all will not be lost.  Or not.  Shoot something moving at different shutter speeds would work pretty well with a propeller driven airplane.   At 1/60th or so, the propeller is a complete circle and as speed increases you get less movement until by about 1/500th the propeller looks like it is not moving.  I wonder if panning was supposed to be examined at the same time?

The only short cut that comes to mind would be to configure the camera to take bracketed shots, and lock the aperture, which would give 3 or 5 shots at different speeds.  Canon gives 3 shots, I think Nikon can do 5.  Just using shutter priority would seem most practical.

[Mrs Woo]

I’m not sure if she’s advanced enough to notice differences in the autofocus.  I was assuming (I know that’s a bad idea, but sometimes you can’t help it) that this is a fairly early/beginning photography class and that they were probably trying to demonstrate motion blur and how it changes with shutter speed.  Since she decided to take pictures of a car driving towards her, I would guess it wouldn’t be going very fast (I hope not ), so I don’t know that say 1/100, 1/250 and 1/500 would show her enough difference in the images with a slow moving car coming at her for her to ‘get’ the point.

I’ll have to ask her how it went if we go visit over there today.

I think I need to embark on one of those ‘picture a day’ journeys and really try to stretch what I do.  I hate every picture I take lately.  SMH

[dstone81]

I am right there with you Mrs.Woo. I am hating most of my pictures here lately too. Though I did get a couple of neat ones at the carnival the other night.  My favorite was of the Ferris wheel.

[Mrs Woo]

I created a Flickr account and put old pictures taken with a 7.2MP point and shoot (Samsung, I think).  Just so I had something to put here.  Since people are so focused on portraiture here and I don’t do much of it (have to get this year’s free shoot done soon though!) I don’t even feel like asking for critiques… all of my pictures are landscapes, wildlife or pets and livestock…  😛

Would love to see your ferris wheel picture.  Sometimes those night time carnival pictures can be so cool.  What I struggle with now, too – is trying to see something completely differently?  How do I make it new again?  I know all the ways it is supposed to be done and how it will look (one book I read about composition pointed out that when you go to famous landmarks, you are unlikely to find anything better than the most famous pictures, because they fulfill our mind’s eye’s expectation for balance and composition.  You might try different lighting or seasons, but in the end your pictures will look mostly like those who have been taken before).

Maybe I belong on a different forum… where is the ‘encouraging new perspectives in photography’ group?   LOL

[cameraclicker]

We don’t always have a Ferris Wheel handy, but once in a while a little one appears in a local parking lot. Here are a couple of photos from 2011, when the Ferris Wheel was visiting.

http://cameraclicker.com/galleries/OtherSites/2011-04-30_21-46-30_IMG_2383_640.jpg

And, a bent one

http://cameraclicker.com/galleries/OtherSites/2011-04-30_21-46-32_IMG_2385_640.jpg

[dstone81]

This is one of the photos I took the other night. It isn’t perfect but I like it. Feel free to check out the other 4. I just started my flickr account.

http://flic.kr/p/e1amFa

[cameraclicker]

I like the ones at the ends better than the solid discs in the middle.  The one the link opens to is nicest.

[dstone81]

Thanks. I still have a tons to learn, but I think I am gradually getting there. I know I have a better grasp now on how apature, shutter speed and ISO work together. Used to I would never take my camera off of the preprogrammed settings and now I am expiermenting more and more with manual mode and Apature priority and shutter priority settings. I think those pics came out fairly decent for not having a tripod with me (they were spur of the moment pics and my tripod was in my car and I was in hubby’s truck..) I used the roof of my husband’s pick up truck and my palm to hold the camera still.

[Egglington]

Well I hit a new point in my creative journey today. It’s 4:54am and I have been up all night evaluating myself as a photographer. The better I get at photography, the more I want to push the other way. It’s hard to explain, but I don’t feel as if my images are inspired nor with meaning, and thus I feel somewhat a failure at my craft. There is so much I want to say about myself, about my experience of the world, I struggle to shape this picture with my camera. I don’t know where I want to take it, I don’t know how to overcome my own insecurities to express myself.

[kbee]

I think I am just getting past the basics and putting what I’ve learned into practice. Unfortunately, I don’t have ready means of transportation so I don’t have a lot to practice on outside of family gatherings on the weekends. Because of this, I feel somewhat stagnant circling the same area trying to put into action what I’ve learned and find creativity.

This week I cleaned out our spare room and set up an impromptu studio with a backdrop. The room has great natural lighting and is also good for my flash photography. But with only me to shoot conveniently, without a remote it’s a pain in the ass to focus, move in, hit a shutter, step back and try to find the focusing plane again before the shutter goes off. That said, I just ordered one, so I’m excited. Hoping to get some real practice in with me, myself and I.

This last week, I finally took some photos that I am proud of and would share. They were consistent, clear, with good exposure and color balance, and as this was during the twilight hours, I was quite adept at adjusting the settings to make up for the fading light – on the fly, not using the LCD screen to make changes. Very pleased. I feel encouraged to keep it up and just wish I had more ready opportunities to torment some poor subject. 🙂

My sister in law said her best friend, who just had a baby, is interested in having me shoot some photos for her. She and her husband are on a tight budget, and I assured her as long as she understood I’ve never done infants before, I would be willing to do my best. And I wouldn’t charge, of course. (As I said that, I imagined a crowd of torch and pitchfork-wielding YANAPers coming for me if I said I’d take the money!)

I just suffer from a lot of self-doubt. I always second-guess myself, and I am a shy person around people I don’t know. That’s a problem in this business eh? I also don’t know what kind of photography I want to get in. So while I am still practicing, I am still undecided and on the fence about where I want to take it. Do I want to remain an enthusiast the family calls on for gatherins, or I am serious about going into business, and what I need to do, personally, to get there.

[Author]

Posts