What is next? What do I want to incorporate into my style at this point?
My philosophy on learning my camera is this - Take it one step at a time, one day at a time.
I love taking pictures, and think if I try to change my style too fast without taking the time to let the current item seep in, I will forget it, or not use it correctly.
I apologize, this is a lengthy post, but it all helped develop how I take pictures, and I just figured get it out of the way now. :) Let's take a step back in time for a moment.
I am 15 years old and I always had my mom's 110 film camera with me. The camera was literally falling apart! The quality wasn't all that great either. But I loved it. (Who feels like seeing some oldies here?) I would take my friends, Robin and Marie out to the park - and we would shoot! (come on Robin, you know you want me to post some! The one on the steps? Purttty Please? lol) This continued for me with my siblings as well. Portraits... little did I know this would help me in the future. Since then, I have been developing my style to what it is today.
circa 1992:
Fast forward approx. ten years. I got my first SLR in 2002. A Canon Elan 7. I had no idea what I was truly holding. I knew at the time that I wanted pictures that were crystal clear - all the time. I became obsessed from that moment on. Family, friends, parties. Every event, everyone could count on me to be there snapping away.
Enter the age of digital cameras. I truly was very hesitant of it. So much so, that in 2005 on my family vacation, I doubled almost all my shots. What ever I took with my Elan 7, I also took with my Kodak Easyshare dx7630. At that point, I needed an upgrade to my digital camera. I took it slow, upgrading to the Kodak Z612. This camera was amazing! I regrettably did not know what I was in possession of until my trip to Florida in 2008. Just about a year prior, I found myself looking (finally) into a DSLR. After reading up about both Canon and Nikon models at that point in time, I came to the conclusion that the Nikon D40X would be the model I got. http://www.amazon.com/Nikon-10-2MP-Digital-18-55mm-3-5-5-6G/dp/B0012OGF6Q/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1296935551&sr=8-1
Downgrading the Z612 http://www.amazon.com/Kodak-EasyShare-Z612-Digital-Optical/dp/B000DZHA6O/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1296935674&sr=1-1 to just a P&S that I took when it wasn't possible to take the D40X. I barely picked it up. I regret not using it more. It met an untimely death when my cat spilled liquid all over it. :( So back to my trip in 2008. We arrived at MCO late due to storms, and got to the hotel at 2am. I woke up super early and decided to try to take no flash pictures of the hotel room. I lay the camera down on the toilet seat cover, not realizing the disaster that lay ahead. SMASH! It fell off and hit the hard tile floor! I was so upset, and had no choice now to use my P&S Z612. Thinking my pictures were going to suck in every way possible. I decided to continue with the no flash photography though through the trip. I got home, and my photos were really good! OK, now when I say good, I mean that they were sharp. The colors were great! The subjects were what I viewed at the time to be what I wanted to capture. From that point on, I decided to not count the little P&Ss out!
Once fixed - I continued to shoot with my D40x, but felt annoyed every time I tried to work with the manual features. Frustrated, I just figured I needed something better because I was not getting what I wanted out of it. How very close minded of me! But no one was there to show me, so I went and purchased my current camera - the Nikon D90. In all honesty, the upgrade was necessary for variable reasons, beyond my situation with the settings. I shot with Auto for about six months, and then started to mess with manual features. I felt the need to control things a little better. I finally understood the why. One by one, I have opened the door to natural light photography, and I will never close it again! The D90 shoots amazingly on auto, but I have found that I love shooting wide open. I love the details. Shallow depth of field (DOF) is amazing. The bokeh! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokeh) I have also since picked up the D40x again, and now understand it better too! It is a great camera and I am glad I fought the urge to sell it once obtaining the bigger camera! The thing with it was, that all the options have to be changed in the menu, where the D90 has designated buttons for the settings. I was just too frustrated at the time to figure it out.
So now, what is next for me? Building my brand and learning everything there is to make each shoot a better one. Lighting is a huge challenge, but I am working on being a natural light photographer. I have recently started to do shoots "professionally". Everyone had been on me for years about it. I finally gave in and am giving it a go! It is a slow beginning, but I want to make sure I am headed in the right direction. I want to be able to provide my clients with a product that they will treasure forever without jacking the prices up so high that it just becomes unreasonable. I have already worked with some amazing people, and have made some great friends along the way as a result.
Thank you to DPS, and the D90 Companion for helping me understand!
The D90 Companion:
i loved this post. not only cause im in it lol, but the fact that i learned something with reading this! ur awsome sisterr!
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