Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Nature deserves a great artist

It's autumn here in Australia.  A time of brilliant colour as the leaves change.  A time of still, clear mornings and beautiful sunrises.  A time when you walk around muttering under your breath that you wish you'd brought along a camera to snap that National Geographic moment.

This morning's dawn was one of those picture-perfect starts to the day.  A pinkish-orange sunrise added a lovely extra red hue to the leaves of the oak trees right out side my window.  It was perfectly calm and only the sound of the birds punctuated the crisp morning air.  One of those days you stare in awe, muttering madly about a missing camera.

Well, my friends, today it all came together - I had the camera close at hand.  My quite new, pocket friendly marvel  which rated quite well in the reviews I pored over before parting with my hard earned cash.  Unfortunately, this morning was also a time for another brilliant discovery.  I can't take a photograph with this new camera to save myself.  They say a picture is worth a thousand words - and it's probably even true in this case, IF you count all the expletives.  Compare the word picture I presented earlier with the blurry, colourless travesty of imagery of that perfect moment in nature.

Exhibit A: Failure to capture a perfect moment in nature

Maybe there's a lesson here for me.  Maybe this is the driver I need to push me to read the manual.  A chance to discover all the wonder this little device has to offer.  But who am I kidding - I can't fight evolution.  I'm a male and no man will read the manual.  I might as well go and line the kitty litter tray with it now.

9 comments:

  1. It's not necessarily a male thing ... not reading manuals. I didn't read the manual for my new camera until I got sick of deleting all the horrid shots and never ending up with anything worthwhile! Finally I just admitted I didn't know how to work the damn thing and starting reading!

    Anyway, for someone who lives in an area where we never see autumn colours, the photo is still lovely. Gorgeous colour! Your word picture was a treat as well.

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  2. Hi Flo, Autumn colour seems to have appeared overnight around here too. I personally like your photo and think it captures the moment beautifully - what a wonderful shade of red!

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  3. It does look a little better shrunk down, but it lacks the colour I could see and in full size looks like it's been taken through a stocking.

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  4. I don't read manuals, either. I just take about a million photos of each thing and usually the odds are pretty good to get a great photo! :) Nice blog!

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  5. I call it bleaching...it's when the light areas of the shot are overexposed to compensate for the darkness of the dark areas. This happens to me a lot, when I am not thinking about what I am trying to photograph in terms of light and dark. (I am also still learning to use my camera and stuff up lots of photos). The camera does not know what you are looking at, it measures the light from all over the shot and then it averages everything out. The trick is to focus on what you want to come out right (like the sky behind the trees) by bringing it closer to you, then depress the shutter button for the camera to take the light measurement... and then, while keeping your button half way pressed, re-adjust your scene (include the tree etc) and then take a shot. Can you do that with your camera? By the way, your manual will not tell you all these things.

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  6. Wow, thank you very much for the tip, Kathryn. I'm not sure if it can do that, but at least I know what to look for in the manual now. I'll see if the camera can and will give it another try.
    Flo

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  7. I like the photo, and I feel like I understand the magnitude of it's beauty with your words to support it.

    But... if you want to improve your photo skills, my fried Katrina teaches an online beginning photography class. She is the one that took the beautiful photos of my garden last year (the photos that ended up in the Edible Estates book!) Here's a link to her photography blog. Info about the class is in the upper right corner of the page. I just thought I would pass that along, but if you're anything like me, trial and error is an awesome way to learn.

    Thanks for the photo. Autumn is by far my favorite time of year (I named my daughter Autumn) See- that's how much I love that season! We won't see anything like this until October where I live, so keep those fall photos coming!


    -Beth

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  8. The secret to photography (in my opinion) is to take a hundred photos, every time you mean to take one. And then throw ninety-nine away. Take photos, all the time, and pay attention to what's working, and what isn't. Also, go look -- really look -- at other photographers, and think about what you like and don't like. Flickr is a great site for exploration. And finally, if you have some photo editing software, you can adjust the saturation and contrast of your pictures.

    I think this image is lovely.

    And thanks for visiting my bees!

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  9. First of all, its a beautiful shot. Second, don't feel bad......I admit to only using my blackberry camera....shock horror!!! Its true.

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