Every Blog Starts With The First Post

I first bought a proper camera in September 2020. But I became a photographer long before that.

A brilliant person once said "The first 10,000 photos you take are bad".

For me, it has taken much more than 10,000 photos. Even if I count the hours of video shot at 24 "pictures per second". The most beautiful thing about photography is that with each click of the shutter you're capturing a moment.

The most beautiful thing about digital photography is that those captures are near limitless. And when you're done capturing, the work begins on a new project. Editing. We live in a world where manipulating photos and videos is accessible to nearly everyone. In my opinion, this is the most exciting part of digital photography.

I do my best to capture the moment I want to relive, and then I edit the exposure, colors, saturation, "mood" after the moment has passed. This allows me to feel more connected to the story I tell.

When I took the photo above, it was a beautiful spring day outside. My wife was unassumingly watering the plants, and I loved the framing with the movement of the water, but her frozen in time doing something she loves to do.

Then, when I opened my photo editor, I had unlimited options. I experimented with really bringing the greens out to accentuate the plant life. (This was the prevailing winner when I asked my Instagram followers to chose a favorite)

In my favorite, I muted all of the colors except my wife's shorts, and the flowers. Poetically, I wanted to capture the 2 most beautiful things in that shot, and highlight them by de-saturating everything else.

But, what is life without options?? I took my saturation creativity a little farther and brought the plants to full bloom, keeping my wife in the foreground... this was a favorite of my early edits, but I didn't like how it removed the 'motion' of the water.

The point of all of this is, digital photography affords us options to make, and fix mistakes. Its art. There is no 'correct'. There is only the photo, and the observer.