Sunday, February 17, 2019

Still thinking

I've never been so far behind on photo editing. Which got me to thinking about the different kinds of photos. For a while during the various art deco events I was watching one of the event photographers.  Pretty sure he was carrying 2 Canon 5Dm4 one with a 70-200, the other with a 24-105 but it might have been a 24-70. Saves changing lens. The advantage he has is that he can go anywhere, shoot anything. I learned a couple things watching him work.

In contrast, I have to stand in the crowd, typically further away. Let's just say women with hats were not making my day. One particular woman, let me just say. Then there was the guy in orange on a bike that kept moving around. People waving. People holding their damn iphones and ipads WAY out there, on a stick even. I totally sympathize with that guy in New York that went around cutting the selfie sticks with a pair of bolt cutters.

The pro event photographer has one mission. Get photos of the people at the event doing interesting things. They are essentially documentary photos. The mayor handing out first prize. The various cars/bikes/floats in a parade. The athletes doing their thing. Whatever. There is little artistry involved. Get the shot (hopefully THE SHOT) and keep moving.

Lots of my shots are documentary. Here we are and this is what we saw there. Whatever it is. There isn't much room for artistic. I'm in a crowd. I can't hang from the railing or chop down that tree to get the angle I might want. The light isn't anything special and I don't have the time to wait for it.

Some of the shots are interesting, at least. Reflection shots often are. Some of the shots feature Linda, one of the major photographic stars of the blog. Posts with her photo in them tend to be more popular. (Curtis and Celina are not available to me just now.) Every now and then I amuse various of my readers with specific things I know will amuse them. I have shots that interest me for some reason, or that I think might interest others and want to show them.

Some of the shots are unique, such as the recent (mostly) sky shots. The stars are different here. Some of the outlook shots are unique as well. Hmmm, I suppose almost all the shots that are not flowers that also grow at home, are unique, given they only happen here. Getting a unique shot is tough. My best hope is to have the camera running getting sky shots, and something interesting (say a disintegrating rocket re-entry) happens.

There are a few artistic shots, where I get interesting scenery, and reasonably interesting light, and I get a chance to think about composition. Thinking about it doesn't necessarily mean finding it. There's times I walk away from something, and only later realize I should have done things differently. Live and learn, I say. I say this a lot.

So lets see. What to show you now?
Linda consorting with a statue? Now that I think about it, I should have posed her differently. Hmmm. We will be walking past it again. Maybe when the light is better. Live and learn.


A reflection selfie in a headlight housing?


 Or a hubcap?

A misty lane.

Another of my bench shots.


1 comment:

  1. Really good shot of Linda! So, I am really taken with this idea of practice. We don't all lead David Noton's life of am caputre, scout, pm capture. For the rest of us we practice and scout when we can, and try to put ourselves in positions where success is possible, when we can. Along the way we capture and document things of interest to ourselves and others. In some cases those documentary photos are like the notes I make when I visit a gallery. The notes are rarely read but the act of writing the notes helps to anchor the visit in my brain.

    I continue to enjoy your documentation, and vicariously participate in your trip. Cheers, Sean

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