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.