Art is serious business. In my experience, many artists act as though they are the most important people on the planet. I guess they must be, right? In that spirit I wanted to be super-important too, so I chose the lofty subject of bubbles to help me gain entree into the rarefied world of The Most Important People on the Planet.
Yup. I admit it. I’ve crossed the line. I don’t think I’ve ever jumped down the rabbit hole (as it were), to THIS extent before. What I’m referring to is the process by which I photographed my old iPhone to sell on eBay. I looked at Apple’s promo shots, and decided I wanted to try to do that too. I thought it would be easy. Mayhem ensued.
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I love low-light, long-exposure shooting. Yet, I never shot fireworks before! I did last night so I just wanted to show you how easy it is. I’ll keep this article short because I want to just give y’all a quick reference on how you can do it yourself.
For the past 2 or more years I’ve been teaching a class called “Meet Your DSLR”. As a result, many more cameras have crossed my path than is the case for most people. Since it is incumbent upon me to show people how to use their cameras, I have by necessity had to learn about many more cameras than I ever bargained for. As a result I’ve been able to form a few opinions about which camera someone should buy. Plus, even though the people in that class have already bought a DSLR (Digital Single-Lens Reflex) camera, they do ask me what the best camera to buy is. I have the answer. It may surprise you.
I’ve been reading this book by Bruce Barnbaum called “The Art of Photography”. The sub-title is more revealing; “An Approach to Personal Expression.” WOW! How many of you have actually considered the idea that photography can be a form of personal expression? I’m not talking about taking snapshots of things that you think are cool. I’m talking about using the medium of photography to express yourself…..and I mean YOURSELF! The more I thought about this idea, the more I came to realize that in the end, photography is a language. Just like any language, it has its own rules of grammar (exposure, depth of field, motion blur, etc), but those rules are NOT communicating anything by themselves. As photographers, we need to use those rules to actually SAY something. Therein lies the rub.
