365 Project

06-08-16

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Day 160 / 525 –

Yesterday, I was driving the back roads, looking for things to shoot, and I came across this place.  I reached back for my camera and realized that I didn’t have my longer lens on me, the longer zoom.  It’s not a really long zoom, or a lens that is highly rated, but I thought to myself, oh no.

And yet, the short zoom, the kit lens, was great for this.  At times, I think I need a different lens setup.  I would like to have a longer zoom range, or maybe some better optics, or some such thing.  And yet, it doesn’t really matter.  What matters is how you feel about what you see, and expressing that in the image.

Yes, there is one lens I will probably get soon.  Something I can use to start exploring portrait photos, as well as macro photography (shooting small things close up).  There are a few lenses I would like to have, that would give me a few other options in terms of wide angles, or longer ranges.

But the truth is, gear can be a crutch.  I have three lenses for my Sony, and they do a great job (wide angle, short zoom, long zoom).  More gear would just mean more to keep track of, more disappointment from inadequate shots taken with more expensive gear (when the issue would most likely be my own lack of experience, thought, practice, etc), and of course, more things that can break at a higher price point.

I forgot that lens yesterday, and because of that, I did miss a shot, but I can go back.  And I am rather pleased with what I did get.

 

06-04-16

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Day 156 / 520 –

I’m reading “It’s Not About The F-Stop” by Jay Maisel.  It’s a photography book about the art and craft of photography, not about the technical details.  There is still a ton I have to learn about photography, but I find that I like to take what I know, use it, get to a point that I’m ready for the next lesson, learn it, then use and repeat.  I don’t just want to learn everything technical and then try to make perfect pictures.

But I sometimes need to be reminded that this is an art, and there is craft involved, and you can’t force a photo.  You have to go looking for it, which also means you have to be open to it.

But the book is also making me look back at my old photos a bit, pulling out things I didn’t work on because it wasn’t in the 365 project.  There are some things I really liked that I shot, and I either forgot about them or pushed them so far back on the burner that I didn’t think much of them.

So while I’m revisiting a few old photos, it comes from the inspiration to see what I left behind.

06-02-16

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Day 154 / 518 –

This is the same barn as yesterday, just from a different side.  The light hits it differently, and of course, the camera doesn’t capture an object, it captures the light that is reflected off the object.  Slight changes in perspective can have a big impact.

06-01-16

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Day 153 / 517 –

I find myself less and less involved in social media these days.  I got burned out on it last year, and I’ve cut way back on my use.  Frankly, I’m happy I did.  I was spending way too much time and energy involved with it.

Social media is getting noisier and angrier, with fake accounts, spam accounts, bots, and the worst of all, the companies themselves.  Facebook creates ways to keep the things the people you follow from reaching you, Instagram might start doing the same thing (curated feeds), and Twitter finds new and clever ways to interrupt your feed with things you don’t care about.

In the Good Olde Days, we had Google Reader and RSS.  You subscribed to a blog (you see, a blog is / was a site where… never mind) in Google Reader, and every time it updated, it was in your feed, waiting for you to read it when you wanted.  It was beautiful.

But wait, how is that different from a social media feed?  Well, when my site updates, it doesn’t have to compete for your attention with a troll, or a food post, or a retweet of something you don’t care about, or the picture of someone’s beard whom you have never met and never will, or smh, or tbh, or tbt, or another ICYMI when you didn’t miss it in the first place and would never “miss” it in the first place, or having to click through to see what someone else said that you don’t care about, or clickbait, or or or….

In other words, Google Reader and RSS gave you what you wanted, when you were ready for it, without all the other crap.  And then they went away.  Google shut down Reader, and the world of social media took over.  And it’s sucked ever since.

But RSS is still alive and well.  A few companies came to the rescue.  I use Feedly for my RSS feeds, and use Digg Reader as a backup.  They both have mobile apps (I use Newsify on my iOS devices), and are fairly easy to use and unobtrusive. With Feedly, just put the URL of the site you want to follow into the Personalize section and you are good to go.

But here is the ninja thing I do on my desktop browser.  I have a pinned tab for my Feedly feed, so it is always available as the first tab, ready to go (I also have the local weather on Wunderground and the NHL scoreboard pinned, but that’s just me).  It takes more effort to go to Facebook or Twitter than it does to look at my Feedly tab and see content that I want to see, rather than what the other sites think I want to see.

So I encourage you to set up your own RSS reading site.  It is the first place I go online, because it puts the things I want and find interesting in front of me.  And it does it on my schedule.

Special thanks to Seth Godin.  His post today inspired this.  He says it better than I do, so please go read him.  I do, every day.