photography, blogging and camera bliss

Thinking about photography recently, I realized that while painting and sculpture are expressions of form and texture in space, photography combines these with the time dimension. I wonder then, what the significance of landscape or nature photgraphy is? Is photography best suited to capture only the decisive moment, as expressed by Henri Cartier Bresson ?

It seems that nature photography is more at heart with everyone. I've come to realise this by the popularity of some of my images on this blog, even though my portfolio is minimal (the images seen here are hosted at flickr, a pretty cool site for hosting pictures, popularity can be judged by the number of views). I also posted this photo on a words/no words thread on the photo.net leica forum and it elicited positive responses. One could be tempted to follow the populist route. Nature photography can be easier and less intimidating than stranger photography on the street. The right thing to do probably is to just continue taking pictures of whatever one feels like, and let the pictures fall into their own categories.

The next issue I have is the aesthetics of a photograph. I'm just lazy to learn photoshop, though I know I'd benefit from it. Some of this is to rebel aginst the multitude of gorgeous-looking-cleaned-up images appearing on photoblogs and the obvious immediate popularity of these. Most of the fun for me is done when the shutter is clicked and I tend to view the rest as perfectionism, as I've alluded to in a earlier post.

I think photoblogging is one of the coolest things to come up on the Web (see photoblogs.org). It does require that you take pictures daily, and I'm discovering this is not easy. The other option is to keep a buffer of images, but then it would not be a photoblog in the classical sense. Uploading/taking a daily picture while keeping the quality up requires a lot of dedication and a lot of time for photography.

As for gear, I've gotten used to my new camera, the Nikon D70 with the 35mm f2 lens bought around thanksgiving last year ... have taken quite a few pictures with it, some of which I've put up here in the last month ... no regrets on the decision to go for a single prime lens, this self-imposed limit actually lets me see more clearly and experiment with composition. The 50mm equivalent is the right choice for me because it lets me do portraiture too, though I find the 35mm much easier to compose with otherwise. The 50mm also makes a photograph with more visual tension. I remember reading somewhere that the 35mm can make more hits, but the 50mm can pull a masterpiece.

With crowded family occasions such as birthdays, however, I often find it extremely difficult to compose well with the 50mm, because of being unable to move. In such a situation, I've found that sometimes moving in very close might open up some new compositions, otherwise unrealized. Of course, you do miss the 'overall' photograph.

The camera has come around very useful for family portraits and I've taken some good photos of kids this past holiday season. Its very obvious that I'm more prolific with a DSLR.

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