Challenge
Jan 16, 2007 Articles, Digital Photography, Learning
I visit PhotoCritic.org every day, most often several times every day. Haje posted a new article today, and this was quite inspirational. You can read the article here: http://www.photocritic.org/2007/photos-as-paintings/
As I’ve just rekindled my hobby, and had the opportunity to move to digital SLR, I’m keen 
to try new things. I took photography as an extra class in school, but that class was more for fun than for “real”. We only got cameras, made our filmrolls (BW) and went out shooting. No real theory or education, but I did learn a few things. At that time we really had to think about our shots before shooting, because film was restricted and took time to develop. This is exactly as Haje writes about in his article. I started thinking about this as a whole, and found that one of the reasons for moving to digital, apart from the obvious, was to be able to shoot a great many shots, to increase the chances capture the right one.
Being able to take as many shots of a scene as your memorycards allow, improves the chances of getting it just right, with a bigger margin of error. This is all well and good, but does that make you a better photograher? In my mind: YES and NO. It opens a new field, but might also let you miss something as you don’t take the time to get every shot “right”. I might be way off here, and please correct me if I’m wrong, but this is a two faced sword to me. (Even though I’m as new as I am to this.)
The 5 shot challenge:
As Haje challenges, I plan to try exactly that. Take a walk or a drive, and bring your camera. When you find something you want to capture, do so, but remember: You only get one shot at a scene. Take your time to get each one right, because if you fail… you have missed that scene.
I will try this one of the first days, but first I have to learn my new camera. It’s a whole lot different to anything I’m used to… Also have a lot to learn about photography in general, so this is a great tutorial for me.
Shot a few tests today, and below is one of the images:
It’s messy, unoriginal and technically lacking. I still am very raw when it comes to composition, lighting, etc etc… and post processing (I shoot in RAW format) is, well… almost non-existant. I increased saturation and contrast a bit, but that’s it. This image is lacking a lot but it’s one of the first taken that came out looking like a picture, so I have actually allready made up a 30×20cm print, and I have to say I was satisfied. (Shot this 20ft. from my front door.)
If I was satisfied with this, I can’t wait until I start really learning, and getting real shots. Guess I have quite a bit to look forward to.
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