I spent a day walking and enjoying the beautiful countryside of the dales. It shouldn't be too hard to create beautiful images in such a lovely environment, yet I found that every time I was taking an image I was looking through the viewfinder thinking things like:
"I'll crop that out"
"I'll clone that"
"I should be able to recover that highlight or shadow detail"
"If I increase the saturation on this, It'll look great"
Once I got a chance to review the images that even I can say quite categorically that everyone of them was irredeemably shite! It dawned on me that instead of working out why I was taking the picture and what it was I wanted to show I had instead become obsessed with the process.
After this I decided to slow down and consider each image as though pressing the shutter release was the absolute final moment of the process. The quality of my images improved dramatically.
West Burton Falls (what happens when you forget about the technology)(Click to view large)
Maybe it's a good idea to forget about the technology and just concentrate on the stories you wish to tell with the images you create.
*that's when an idea comes to you, as opposed to a revelsation which is what happens when you put a choccy in your mouth and discover it has a coffee centre not peanut.
1 comment:
I completely agree... In the early part of this year, I went through a real stage of taking crap landscape shots, and at the time never really understanding why. The problem was that I was becoming with new techniques, HDR and other post-processing...
When I went to Iceland, I vowed to change all that... Camera, grads, tripod and skill were in order. I slowed waaaay down, and when I got home, I had dozens of decent shots!
Mind you, all this talking about forgetting the technology doesn't stop me from wanting a spangly new D3! ;o)
Post a Comment