Brand new passionate photographer, seeking advice

[12sndsgood]

Your photos look a LOT like most young, untrained d-slr photographers from today. Lots of use of the tilted camera, cross-processing and faded types of effects, and kit-lens depth of field looks (formerly called pan focus for decades). Your photos look very much like the blog-type images seen among young, female photography enthusiasts of the early 2000's...they will look very dated within a few years, once the next big thing comes along. So...you're easily able to emulate a specific style that is currently popular, and comes largely from using the kit lens type gear sold with most lower-level d-slr's these days...those lenses have deep DOF, and the images have a pretty similar "look" to them, courtesy of the small-chip d-slr cameras and relatively low-noise, smooth images that most consumer d-slr cameras produce.

I'm not sure what,exactly, you want to do, but like I read in your blog, you had a heck of a time learning to touch type--but NOW, you are very good at it. I think that's a good story, and there's probably a lesson in there for your photography. For example, typing's home row position...what about photography's "20mm position", or photography's "300mm lens angle of view"...both equally foreign to many younger people who do not have experience beyond the d-slr and 18-55 or 18-200,slow kit lenses, or the 55-200 kit. Have you experienced the 1:1 macro lens's way of "seeing"?

Let alone the way a square-format camera shoots, be it a Holga, or a Rolleiflex, or a Hassy or an old Seagull 120 TLR; a camera positioned at waist level or chest level is a very different way of seeing things; "film", and "lenswork" and "composition" are subjects that are currently not studied much by the majority of people. I think if yuo wish to grow as a"photographer" (in quotes), you need to study photography, and to broaden and expand your equipment and your approaches beyond what is currently being done by the Flickr and the blogging crowd, both of which are filled with self-taught people whose work is technically okay, but who often lack a real vision that has been shaped by others in the field. photography has been around since the 1840's,and has been done by the masses since the 1890's, but the vast majority of on-line photography is now being put out by people wth an interent connection, a Nikon D40 or iPhone, and who have never studied a single book on the subject....kind of like learning history from a 19-year-old college freshman.

I re-read this, and it might sound negative to you, but it's my dispassionate advice and analysis; your stuff looks almost exactly like what I would expect it to look like from a beginning, self-taught person of your age group. The takeaway message is, "pay attention to what you study, and to who your teachers actually are." Would you want to emulate Miley Cyrus as a singer if you were going to become a singer? Or perhaps, somebody older, better, and more-talented and who will not fade like yesterday's newspaper?

Derrel, not to be sarcastic, but is this message meant to be encouraging?

It's all in how you take in information. i thought it was pretty good advice for someone who really wants to grow and become something more then the run of the mill photographer with a blog and flikr account.

 

[Aerin328]

Roger. Was genuinely asking sir. Critique indeed is necessary for our growth, but sometimes it can be interpreted as negative which can potentially be harmful, esp. to someone starting off.

 

[wendyalana]

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[wendyalana]

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[Derrel]

Derrel, not to be sarcastic, but is this message meant to be encouraging?

What do you think?

Let's see, if she got the camera on October 1,2010, then she's been "passionate" about it for somewhere in the time frame of 54 days or so...she's already able to imitate/emulate/produce work in the curent style popular among her generation, and in the blogosphere where she is currently working...


Not to be sarcastic, but what's your take on my post's intended purpose or intent? How much time did you spend reading her blog and looking at her images before you spewed back an answer that's really a question?

Not to be sarcastic, but...I wrote my post after reading much of her blog and looking at her entire Flickr pages..I told a newbie with less than 60 days what I have learned in 37 years, in about one paragraph. No need to feel discourgaed--she's been at it "passionately" for less than two MONTHS!!!!! Chu-ripes! Rome was not built in a day. It takes longer than 60 days to make cheese. Seriously...two MONTHS? her progress is already excellent, but if she were in chef school, she'd still be chopping green onions, making bacon bits and boiling eggs...not making the entrees...

 

[Derrel]

Malcolm Gladwell says that if you want to shine, put in 10,000 hours - Times Online

Malcolm Gladwell says it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert, in almost anything. In 54 days, spending eight hours per day on photography, you could have already devoted 432 hours to photography. That is, if you had dedicated eight hours each and every day to the study and practice of photography. So, why be discouraged? The OP's responses throughout this thread seem to indicate an unfamiliarity with the amount of time that some people have devoted to the art, science, and craft aspects of photography. I started photography at age 10. I am 47 years old now. I still have a lot to learn. And I am not discouraged. Words I use like "untrained" might have negative connotations to some, as would "unstudied",and so on; for those of us who have been 'trained' by professionals and mentors, the word untrained means just that; for those that have not read five or six serious, hard-core reference books on the science aspects, the word "unstudied" means just literally that--not having studied the art, science, or the craft that was established in the 1840's...

Photography is too broad and too deep and too diverse to learn without using the resources out there,and far too complex to learn in less than two months' time...and I mean that in the most sincere, and gentle way possible.

 

[white]

Derrel's posts fill me with ze passión. :blushing:

 

[Aerin328]

Derrel, first of all I recognize you as a skilled photographer. I've looked at some of your posted work and am quite admittedly and clearly am less experienced of a photographer than you. I've read some of your other posts as well and you seem to be consistently quite helpful. I kept that in mind when I read your response in this post chain. So, [insert olive branch here]. I think what framed your original post in the light that I saw it was your: ' "photographer" (in quotes) ' - which implied to me that you thought that perhaps the OP was not a real photographer, but one that required some kind of classification due to her experience level. Indeed, she may have put in many less hours or years, but I believe she may be identified as a photographer. Any young artist may be identified yet as an artist. Anyway I am way too foolish to judge someone I do not know (you), so my "question" was indeed a (perhaps poorly worded) question, asking whether or not you intended to be supporting (perhaps a better word than "encouraging"), or, as I've seen in more than a few artists in my day, simply a bit elitist. I can see now it was the former, not the latter. Clearly I invoked from you a bit of... passion... and perhaps just a smidge of tart sarcasm?

Separate comment...
I grew up in a family of professional artists, and the artistic community is often one of, I'll say, "culture-" be it local, national, whatever. That is, the artistic "professionals" who are, indeed, very experienced and skilled, sometimes kindof get together and "decide" what the current artistic style is or isn't based on a consolidation of their perspectives. Anyway, I do not see this as art. Imo art is the creation of some thing (painting, music, photography) that has the potential to evoke a sense of "Truth" in the observer. But the greatest art, though it may have potent potential, is often lost on many, many observers. Ultimately art boils down to the experience of the individual, how it makes them think or feel. And that is why even a novice can create something "great" - it only takes one observer to look at that and "lose their breath" for something artistic to have happened. I personally felt that the OP had a few photos that I myself felt quite moved by. I am not interested in fads, in what single women in their mid-30's did or didn't do 10 years ago or today- to me it's all meaningless. Just to me it's what you, or I, experience within us when we behold a photograph that engenders artistic value- not how that photograph fits in to some kind of cultural or historical framework.

 

[wendyalana]

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[jaymac]

I appreciate all comments and schools of thought. i went away from the forum feeling a bit embarassed and I do understand that someone who has been in photography for 40 years would place "passionate" in quotes and probably a bit of eye rolling on his part.

That being said, I didn't get into this thinking I would be an expert. I simply took some photos that others (I'm sure not fully trained) have responded to. I recently quit my desk job of 13 years in beige cubicles and picked up a camera. I've always been an emotional person and I feel that I can capture other's emotions and in turn tell a story, even if far from technically perfect. If anything, I'll keep practicing, reading, absorbing and loving capturing life from behind a lens and if one day blessed with a child, will at least be able to document their journey in photos, even if not technically perfect. I'll always cherish the cheesy scrapbooks that my mother made me because of the heart and effort she put into it.

I'm new to the forum but so far it seems that the "beginners" forum is full of experts who critique works as though they were taken by other experts. In fact this is one reason why I've shyed away from this forum.

I think you take wonderful photo's and would gladly pay you to take photos for me. I think exacly the same way as you do. I'm not really into all the techniques and effects. I just want to be able to capture the moments that happen in my life and have great looking photos as a result. I just resently finished my son's first scrapbook and the photos I have in it are what matters. Not how the photos were taken or what technique I used or what lighting was used or how much PP was needed.

I think there are true experts on this forum but they need to remember that at some point they also were just picking up a camera for the first time and didn't know everything they know now and who would be discouraged as well if someone critiqued their work as they critique ours.

(Sorry for sort of hi-jacking your thread but it seemed a good spot to post my rant.)

Great pics on your flckr account though!