What one thing do you wish for most?

If you could choose just one thing to make your photography better what would it be? Would it be a lens? A new camera body, the latest software? Or would it be something else? Would a new computer make your photos better or maybe a new printer? I have been thinking a lot about what will make my photos better than they are now. One conclusion I am coming to is that a lot of stuff I spend time and money on do not directly make my photos and better, or any worse for that matter.

I think when we distill photography into it's core, it really is about us as artists more than the equipment we use. Don't get me wrong, we still have to have equipment but does it really have to be more powerful than a small city or can it be our old Pentax Spotmatic a 55mm f1.8 lens, and a couple of rolls of Tri-X and nothing more?

I think that for me sometimes I let the equipment drive what I can and cannot do. For instance, I justify a more expensive camera because the Canon G10 I have just won't shoot the shallow depth of field I want so I have to have the D300 and 85mm f1.8 lens. Or I get a Lensbaby so all of my photos have to have a lot of out of focus areas in them. While these functions of a camera or lens can be limiting, I am trying to view them as tools to capture what I envision. Now I just need to choose the proper tool for that particular circumstance. I really want the vision that we have talked about before and David DuChemin captures in his books so well. Joe McNalley also creates the look he wants because he per-visualizes it before he shoots it. I love to watch Joe because he often does not get it perfect the first time out and has to experiment some, just like us mere mortals! Gotta love it.

So besides a 24 - 70mm f2.8 and a 70 - 200mm f 2.8, I'd really like a good dose of vision for my photography. So what do you want when you go out and shoot? Equipment is fine, let us know what you need to make better photographs.

In this blog, I have focused a lot on practicing our own individual vision and I think that it is a critical skill for us as photographers. I believe we really need to get out of our comfort zone and try new things to show ourselves a new perspective. I have referenced David DuChemin's excellent e-books that can be found at Craft & Vision as pdf downloads. I strongly suggest that if you want to get better at seeing photographs, you buy his e-book series which can be bought for $5 each. It's a bargain!

When we are looking at stretching ourselves as photographers, we need to try things that are a little different or even wildly different than what we normally shoot. This could be switching from a telephoto to a wide angle lens, using only a "standard lens" and not a zoom, shooting from multiple angles. Basically it can be anything that leads us to a new perspective.

I shot these photos last year in the darkroom at Yuba College while attending a black and white photo class. I wanted to shoot some long exposure b&w photos in the darkroom so I shot a series first using my DSLR. By doing this with a digital camera first, I could figure out what my exposure needed to be with film. My exposure on these photos was about 30 seconds to a minute and my exposures with Tri-x were several minutes long.

These photos took me out of my comfort zone and made me thing about the act of taking (making) an exposure I wanted. Some may hate them, some may love them and that is fine with me because they made me think. Do these photos make you think differently about how you want to shoot photos? All feedback is welcome.

Prom time of year

I had the privilege of shooting prom pictures for my daughter and several friends last week. Not only was it a great experience and gave me some nice images for my portfolio but it also helped the kids out. Everything these days is much more expensive then when I went to prom about a thousand years ago. This was a really fun group of kids who had a good time in front of the camera. I only have one regret from this shoot and that is that I did not have more time with each couple to try different poses. Some were ready to be finished after the first shutter release and others were willing to keep going.

The goal here was to give each couple a few really good shots of them in their prom finery and not hold up the rest of the kids too much. As the day was warm, it was necessary to keep things moving fairly quickly. Fortunately, I have a good friend, Dane Wilson who I shoot with regularly who offered his help. So Dane and my son both helped by getting the couples in place quickly and then holding a sunshade to keep the harsh sun off the kids faces. We got all the kids processed through within about 1 1/2 hours.

These photos were shot with a Nikon D300 and a Nikkor 85mm f1.8 lens. In most cases, f5.6 was used to keep enough of the couples in focus. In retrospect, and if I had some more time, I might have shot a little more wide open to get a softer background. Overall though, I am happy with these photos. Let me know what you think . . . . .

Computer headache

After a frustrating weekend with major computer problems I finally got my computer back up and running. I had to have some heavy duty help though because I was out of my element for sure. (It's great to have smart friends - actually it's just great to have friends!) When we finally got things figured out, it was a bad memory stick causing the conflict which was fortunate because the fix was relatively inexpensive. The negative side to the story was that I ultimately had to reformat my C drive which means I lost all my settings, favorites and my music library. I am still trying to recover all my data.

When I had this computer built by Circular Systems in Sacramento a little over a year ago, I specced two 320GB hard drives so that I could back up all my photos to a separate physical drive. I highly reccomend Circular for computers, they can build you anything you might want and will work with you to get you exactly what meets your needs. In this case, that second drive was a lifesaver. All my photos were saved on the D drive and fully recoverable. With the low cost of hard drive storage these days, there is really no reason to not have a backup drive. In fact, I saw 500 GB Western Digital and Seagate drives this past week for about $50 each.

Another great idea is imaging software which allows making a copy of everything on your hard drive in case of a problem. It was this "image" that allowed me to get my Operating System back up and running. I used Acronis software to make the image and I know there are numerous other options as well.

After all the drama with computers, I did actually get out for a little while and went with my son and friends to the "Spring Get Together" Car show on Plumas Street in Yuba City. We had a good time shooting some very nice cars. The weather was perfect for this kind of outing. Shown are a couple of examples . . . . .

You can check out my articles about event photography at Examiner.com Let me know what you think or if you have ideas about events that might be interesting for readers.