These are the very first shots the night Rory came home from the hospital after her birth.
Quick! Get a shot of her brother meeting his sister for the very first time. I was not quite prepared. The light was poor. As you can readily see there is a lot of grain(noise) in these photos. I had not planned for dim lighting and did not want (simply forgot) to use flash.
Hey! A shot is a shot. I have to live with that. It’s all we got. No one else was holding an iPhone nearby. I wish….
Dawn. Great light. Maybe!? The right moment? Can my camera capture the moment as I see it? All good observations and questions.
Ok! The camera has trouble focusing upon clouds. No contrasting lines help to define a focus point. Set the focus point on the trees or something at the horizon. Exposure. The scene is dark and the meter tends toward overexposure. Metter the sky to increase the saturation of the morning color. Finally, cheat. Use Lightroom to increase vibrance and saturation. It might just look like what you saw at the critical moment.
Washington Dulles airport. It’s around 1AM in the morning. We are landing. It’s a night shot. It would be near impossible to take this image with film. Digital is a challenge. And I daresay most folks don’t bother or try.
Challenge. It’s dark. You need to fool the camera meter. And it has to focus upon something. Yes, there is some skill. Not much. But some. I would like a sharply focused image. I settle. And composition would be more interesting if I could zoom in on something interesting. And then the shutter speed would be too slow and everything would be blurred. Take what you can get. Not too bad. Not too good.
When my kids first dove with me (the one and only time), I was sure to document our adventure. Yes, it is an outstanding memory. It is for sure a bonding memory of activity my kids and I shared. We skied, we hiked Bear Mountain… At least I was part of their life. Priceless.
More underwater photography in natural lighting. One deals with the blue tint. There is always some murkiness. It is seen in the background. Nonetheless it is a priceless photo of both kids and our diving experience.
This picture makes me happy. Hoop dancer. The metadata suggests it was the Indian powwow on Labor Day 2006. It’s a good shot. Good lighting. Nice composition. I’m glad I was there. No complaints.
Oh boy! Terrible. What I know now…. And digital lets you shoot and shoot… Do over, please! Gee, but I was terrible. Good camera does not a photographer make. Not much else one can say about a bad pic. Mistakes everywhere you look. Potential. And at least there is something. My childhood had precious few shots – almost none. I could do much better now. Really!?
Lighting, composition, focus, pose… you name it. Focus? I had 20/20 vision. Lens? Camera? Photographer? A poor workman blames his tools. If I do it all over again…
Whoa! I did a double take. That’s my kid?! None too handsome! I am embarrassed and ashamed – at myself. What a bad picture! Is it the kid or the photographer? It better be me! Gee! Fat faced and funny looking, could I have done better? I did. And he (no names please) got much better looking. Wow! That was startling to come across. I am still shaken.
Slide film. Poor lighting. Poor composition. I prided myself on knowing how to take a picture. Obviously, I thought too much of my skill. Go home. Try another day. Sorry, this was a bad day.
Colleen asked me for snow picture. Easy. Right? Not! It’s a big catalog with a lot of pictures and most are not snow. There is the database. Snow should be easy? I just flipped randomly till I found an image with snow.
Snow is hard to shoot. It is bright white and tends to be underexposed by the camera’s automatic metering. Otherwise in bright sunlight the snow tends to be washed out – ie no detail. Anyway, snow! No other context – location or time.
The image catalog landed here. The color is intense. Spring! Tulips! Ok! Of course I never take just a single image. Any of them are worthy to pause and admire. I shot that?
Composition? None. Just shoot. Focus. Sure. Color? Great. The bright sun makes the color pop! It’s a photo that makes you stop and admire it. I shot that? Yeah, and I’m proud of it.
Intentionally. I shot this on the fly through the car window as we sped along some highway. Does it matter? Ha ha. Relevant? It’s not a good shot. It’s not bad. Reasoning: I wanted a pic, a representative pic of the fall foliage. I was not willing to stop every 100 feet. So, shoot, get what you can, and sort the rest later. Reason: Otherwise you would not have shot nothing.
Technique: I keep the camera on the dash board. Wide angle? Too wide. So I use something like – aha! – 60mm on my trusty zoom. I let everything else go automatic. A shutter speed too slow will give you motion blur.
It works. Shot after shot. Some good. Some bad. But there is something to show the fall foliage. Fine photography it ain’t and you may roundly criticize. But it works for me. I stay married and we get somewhere to where we were headed.
Shhh! One mustn’t be late to Thanksgiving….
PhotoCritical 