amolitor
TPF Noob!
- Joined
- May 18, 2012
- Messages
- 6,320
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- Location
- Virginia
- Can others edit my Photos
- Photos OK to edit
Just about the most frustrating thing for me to see photographers doing is using, copying, repeating, and sharing recipes for things: what f-stop should I use for this? Where should I put the flash? Is there a photoshop action for that? How do I do the Brenizer thing? What camera should I use for sports?
It happens at all levels and in all aspects of photography, from basic issues of getting the exposure right, through composition, and post processing.
There's nothing wrong with a good recipe! But a recipe you don't fully understand is worse than useless. Maybe the recipe is right for a full-frame camera, but wrong for a crop sensor. Maybe it's right for a prime lens but not a zoom, or for color but not b&w. Every recipe has a TON of built-in assumptions. If you follow a recipe blindly, you'll never know what the unspoken assumptions are. Some recipes will work for you, others will mysteriously fail.
When you get a recipe from somewhere, please, I beg you, take it apart and try to understand it at a deeper level. Explain it to yourself in whatever terms you understand. There's no bottom to the unpacking process, there's always another layer of deeper understanding, so don't try to get to the bottom. Just dig down one or two levels. But dig, and think, and force yourself past the easy "step 1, step 2, step 3" of the recipe.
Do this most every time, and I swear to you, I promise, technical problems will start to simply melt away and you will wonder why you thought this stuff was so hard.
It happens at all levels and in all aspects of photography, from basic issues of getting the exposure right, through composition, and post processing.
There's nothing wrong with a good recipe! But a recipe you don't fully understand is worse than useless. Maybe the recipe is right for a full-frame camera, but wrong for a crop sensor. Maybe it's right for a prime lens but not a zoom, or for color but not b&w. Every recipe has a TON of built-in assumptions. If you follow a recipe blindly, you'll never know what the unspoken assumptions are. Some recipes will work for you, others will mysteriously fail.
When you get a recipe from somewhere, please, I beg you, take it apart and try to understand it at a deeper level. Explain it to yourself in whatever terms you understand. There's no bottom to the unpacking process, there's always another layer of deeper understanding, so don't try to get to the bottom. Just dig down one or two levels. But dig, and think, and force yourself past the easy "step 1, step 2, step 3" of the recipe.
Do this most every time, and I swear to you, I promise, technical problems will start to simply melt away and you will wonder why you thought this stuff was so hard.
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