Welcome to “Light Lines”! I want to provide a few disclaimers as I launch my photography blog. As a documentary and personal photographer I am committed to straight photography. On my site you won’t see those beautiful multi-layered manipulated Photoshop photos that are seen on so many photography sites. While I admire the art and talent it takes to create those photos they do not represent who I am, or how and what I like to photograph. That’s not to say I don’t employ tools in Lightroom and Photoshop. But the main thing any photographer should strive for is to get it right in the camera first.
So, this blog will not talk about techniques for manipulating photos – rather, I will share my thoughts on the essence of photography, storytelling, seeing the world in front of you, using light and circumstance to capture the image you want, choosing lenses, finding inspiration, and some general thoughts on photography as a whole. I will also talk about some of my photos and how they were shot.
We can all continue to improve our photography whether we use a phone, a point and shoot, digital SLR or mirrorless (and even film) camera. The most important thing in this regard is to know your equipment and the best way to do that is to experiment, a lot. Manuals are important but I find that books written about specific camera models are even better for learning all the settings and how to use them. Personally, I shoot with Nikons; the D810 and D850 and the mirrorless Z7. There are many resources online for using phone cameras and point and shoot cameras, as well as the more complex DSLR and mirrorless models – in short there is no lack of information, you just have to make yourself read through it and extract what works best for you. If you truly want to make your photographs better, you have to put in the time and effort. You want to have a basic understanding of light, depth of field, shutter speed vs aperture, composition and your intent. Why are you taking this picture? I’ll get into all of this in subsequent blogs but at least it should start you thinking.