Growth of a photographer

I don't claim to be a professional photographer, far from it; or even to aspire to be one. But I would like to be able to take really good photographs. Over the last few months this desire has been growing.

About a year or so ago I decided to buy a camera. We have been using Lucy's Kodak Easyshare 5 megapixel for years, and it has done us just fine, but when it came time for me to invest in a camera I decided I wanted a little more creative control. I went to Pardee Camera Repair in Sacramento, where I met a man who gave me great advice and helped me choose a good point and shoot that had enough options to give me room to grow and explore photography a bit more than the standard fully automatic settings. I settled on the Olympus SP 320, which was the point-and-shoot that the camera guy said he owned. He said he also owned an Olympus DSLR, so I guess that makes him an Olympus fan-boy... and myself not far behind.


I used this in automatic mode and shot some photos occasionally for quite a while. Then I came across HDR photography. I was immediately drawn to the style. I wanted to learn to do this myself, so I started to research. I discovered that it is a digital processing technique used to combine bracketed images together to form an image with a greater range of visual data than a normal exposure will capture. For those who don't know I shall describe it briefly here.

Bracketing is a technique where the camera (although it can be done manually, but who would want to do that!?) takes multiple photos and adjusts the exposure slightly in each shot. You end up with a regular exposure shot, like you would normally take, where in the shot above the sky is probably more washed out and white, and the grass is darker and has less definition. Then you get a shot that is overexposed, so everything is more washed out, but you can see the detail in the grass and shadows. Finally you get a shot that is underexposed, so everything is dark, but you get definition in the bright areas, such as the clouds, where definition would have been lost and washed out. The computer combines the best areas of each photo to produce an image that is much closer (albeit slightly digitized) to what the human eye sees, as it constantly and dynamically adjusts. Whew!

I discovered that my SP 320 is capable of taking bracketed shots, and so I started to experiment. This is where I discovered one thing first, which lead to another later. First is that I am a poor amateur photographer, as once I left the automatic realm and started dabbling in "creative" modes where I have some measure of control over what the image comes out like, I started getting images with issues all over the place. I messed with this for a while and then kinda let that smolder for a while. I did more learning and started to realize that my camera, while multi-functional in comparison to "dumb" point-and-shoots, was still severely limited.

This prompted me to want to upgrade. I did quite a bit of research, and based on conversations in past and reading opinions and reviews online, I narrowed the field to Nikon, Canon, and of course Olympus. Armed with this I made the momentarily weak decision to go to the camera store once again. I arrive with less than a half hour to closing, to debate the finer points of all these cameras with the salesman. He immediately tossed out Nikon, mainly because it didn't have a self cleaning sensor, resulting in him having to have his camera sensor cleaned 3 times already (he conveniently owned a Nikon, Canon, and Olympus DSLR). I wanted to remain faithful to the Olympus, as I like my 320, and was a little apprehensive about becoming one of the crowd and following the herd with a Canon. Ultimately the Olympus that has DIS (digital image stablization) built into the body was more than I wanted to spend, plus the lens situation at purchase was not working out as I had planned before hand, and Olympus lenses don't offer DIS. Canon on the other hand offers many lenses with DIS (but not in the camera body), and I could get the lenses I wanted for it at the time of purchase... so I broke down and bought the Canon Digital Rebel XTi

Now I am learning to use my new camera. I love it already. I can already tell a difference in my photos. Even using the same fumbling techniques I was trying on my SP 320, I am getting much better results, most of the time, on this camera. I am excited to learn to take better photographs, both from an artistic eye composition standpoint as well as from a technical photograph settings exposure standpoint.

I plan to continue to chronicle my adventures and experiences along the road to becoming a better photographer here. My inspiration is a man, Tra Ratcliff, who goes by Stuck In Customs. You can see his flickr photostream here and his website/blog here. He takes primarily HDR photographs, and extremely good ones at that. I hope one day to have my photostream be as impressive has his. As it stands right now I have a photostream that looks like everyone else's.

I encourage you all to go out there and record your life... go on! It's free! :)

There are multiple events this weekend where I may have the opportunity to get some cool photos, if I go out photo hunting. Maybe I will have some cool stuff to post besides pictures of my pets (see recent photos added here).

Have a great weekend.