Getting Pickier

Details: A children's festival in the small town of Izushi-Cho, Japan.
Nikon D70s with Nikkor 50mm | 50mm, 1/500 @ F5.6, ISO 200

David DuChemin stats in his nice little pdf book “10″:

There is a tendency when you frist start out to shoot everything in sight. Do it. Shoot it all. There are shots we all need to take to get out of the way; they help us learn the basics and go towards the first 10,000 frames that it takes to get better at this craft. But eventually most of us have to slow down, take a breath, and get picky.

I have had an SLR camera for a couple of years now, and I think I have pretty much done what David says in the above quote. I was gung-ho in my attitude to shooting whatever I could, especially when I was living in Japan. Everything in Japan looked new and fresh to me, whether it be a child walking to school, the temples, the food, the vending machine, a pretty girl talking on her phone, or a monk praying. I wanted it all. I shot it all. I wasn’t too picky. I wasn’t very skilled. A large percentage of my pictures are “happy snap” ready that can be put in a photo album. A low percentage however, are hangable.

While I enjoyed every moment clicking away at a furious pace, I didn’t always get the results I wanted when sitting back home in front of my computer at night. And it is obvious now, that I didn’t always focus on what was important in the shot. All of the subjects I shot had their own unique attributes and an importance, but I didn’t spend the time to find it within them. Of course, as my year in Japan progressed, I had taken hundreds of shots of shrines, and some of those shots got better as I discovered better ways to capture them. I think I also started to capture the distinct differences of each shrine, especially when I realised my time to go back to Australia was around the corner. I had to get pickier. “Get Pickier” is part 1 of David’s book.

This year, for me to “get pickier”, I am going to spend time focusing on one photographic subject before moving on. When I say focus, I don’t mean master it. I mean discover it again. Play with it. Find out whether I enjoy that subject and working with it? Then move on. Once I have found out what really motivates me, I will tighten my focus on that subject area.

What subject areas do we have? Well, there is portraits, landscapes, architecture, still life, sports, wildlife, night photography and many others. I have always enjoyed candid street photography, so I am going to start there.

More to come.