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.

Insurance

This was supposed to be a post about the type of tools I use when I am practicing my photography. I plan to highlight equipment, including cameras, lenses, tripods, cleaning gear, camera straps and computer hardware and software I use. Instead, this is a warning to all readers to make sure they properly back up all their images and their documents on their computers. This evening as I was doing some routine computer work, my main desktop locked up and will not allow me to boot it up. I have some good help dealing with it but even with the help I can't get it working. There are still some things I can try and can ultimately take it back to the shop that built it.

The warning is really to make sure your images are safeguarded. I am confident that even if this computer were dead, which I am pretty sure it is not, I can pull my internal drives and save all my images prior to 2010. I have two Western Digital 320 GB drives and the second drive mirrors (backs up) the images on the first drive. I essentially have two copies of all my photographs. The critical photos, I also back up onto CD or DVD as added insurance. For all my 2010 photos, I have started saving them onto a Western Digital My Mirror Edition Hard Drive which backs everything up on to a second drive within the same enclosure. I got mine at B&H Photo in NY. Western Digital has discontined my model in favor of a 2TB version (1TB for each drive.) It currently sells for $175. Pretty inexpensive insurance I'd say.

I am no computer expert and don't plan to become one but I do plan to take a hard look at how I back up my files to make sure my methods afford me the greatest protection that is reasonable. I would encourage you to do the same.

Creativity in Photography

Creativity is an elusive concept and something may photographers struggle with. It does seem that while a lot of us have a hard time with creative blocks, it's not really something we spend a lot of time talking about or working on. I think we may be making a mistake by not spending more time discussing the nature of the creative blocks. It's my opinion that if we did more things like photowalking and working with other creative people, we might reach a kind of critical mass that would propel us to the next level of creativity.

In an effort to stimulate creativity, I have been reading the excellent e-books written by David DuChemin. His books cost just $5 each and are a great bargain. His first two books, "Ten" and "Ten More" are extremely practical and filled with exercises designed to get us thinking and working at pre-envisioning out photographs. They also are aimed at getting us totally comfortable with our cameras so we can interpret our own vision in our photos.

This evening I have been reading David's book "the Inspired eye Notes on Creativity for Photographers." Several things David had to say really resonated with me. First David starts off by saying creativity isn't easy. Oddly, this makes me kind of happy. I like the idea it's not just dumb luck or luck of the draw that makes our creativity work. He goes on to say that work will generate creativity and that we probably won't find creativity without work. Again, I find it comforting to know that as long as I am trying, inspiration may come to me. Ultimately, it's the idea that on my worst shooting day, there is still hope.

The images I have posted here were both shot in the same morning and were both a little bit out of my normal shooting modes. The first was shot with a Nikon D300 and 70 - 300mm lens from a tripod. I was forcing myself to shoot in manual mode and was looking for abstract images or shapes and colors. The second was shot handheld in my car while driving. Again, I was using a D300 and an 18-70mm Nikon lens for this shot.