Monday, August 31, 2009

Sunrise Walk


Sunrise walk
Originally uploaded by Teckelcar
I consider myself a decent photographer. I took a class many, many moons ago in high school and learned the basics, from f-stops to black and white film developing.

I loved it.

The whole process of composing a shot, developing the film, making a contact sheet and deciding how to crop and pint the photo was like a wonderful form of alchemy to me. The acrid smell of the chemicals, the mysteries of the film bag it was all great fun for me.

But after the class that was it. I had no dark room so I had to be content with what I could do through the view finder.

After I got married my husband got a digital camera fairly early on, it was a fairly nice Kodak, but I resisted it. The shutter speed was annoyingly slow. When I hit the button I want the picture taken now, not a fraction or so of a second later. Then I started using it more as I started to appreciate the amount of control I had with the pictures afterward.

With my current camera I have found happiness. It has an acceptable shutter speed and I have a fair amount of control in how it takes pictures. Most of the time I happy with the full automatic mode, but there are times I use the natural light setting. I love how I can instantly check and see if I got shot I was hoping for. Then I get to upload my pictures onto my computer and futz with them to my heart's content.

Usually all I'm doing is cropping and adjusting the brightness. Occasionally I venture into tint and and a few other tricks like sharpness. I still like to compose my pictures in the veiwfinder.

And then every now and then I get one that is perfect straight out of the camera. This is one of them, all I had to do was rotate it 90 degrees and hit save.

The reflections on the water and the sun flare came out just right. I was able to shoot it just so I got the right amount of flare to make everything sparkle. The image is crisp and balanced. This is one of those times I think of myself as a very good photographer.

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