Learning Digital Photography: viewpoints of a beginner.

Okay so in all honesty I'm not a photographer, at least I never considered myself one.  I have always considered myself an artist.  I went through 6 years of art school, and earned a BFA in Art Education with a concentration in drawing.  That of  course was after I failed to live up to what I fell in love with, metals.  Or to be more specific, I fell in love with the process of enamelling.  Unfortunately I did not have the skills to build the jewelry around the jewels I was creating.  I swear when I get to the point that I can do enamels again, I will outsource the finishing of the jewelry to someone with the skills to do what I want. 

In the meantime, I have taken up a new obsession since I have been forced to not work for a few weeks after having back surgery.  I have taken up photography.  There is a dual purpose to this choice.  First off, I draw, I love to draw, I am happiest with a pencil or pen, or even paint in hand, creating beautiful work.  And photography allows me to compose a picture that can be recreated later using other media.  I find that using original photography for new source material is smart.  Not only do I NOT have to worry about copyright issues, but I can also compose the pictures first through the lens, and transfer it to paper. Secondly this also allows me to have the instant gratification of composing beautiful work.  Most people don't realize that good photos have good subjects, great photos are composed and well thought out. And it may take 50-100 pictures to capture the one view that stands out from the rest. 

This is most true when photographing children.  I literally took 30 pictures of my daughter back to back, and just by accident she turned to me and gave me a heartstoppingly beautiful look, and I happened to catch it.

I am a firm believer in quantity breeds quality.  I will take tons of pictures, playing with the various settings, lighting arrangements, angles, and subjects.  I then load them on my computer and start weeding through them when I have time.  Over 3 days I took almost 400 pictures, and weeded out those that were blurry, badly exposed, and just badly composed.  I have 280 left.  Then I went through and selected those that captured my attention, and flipped back and forth finding the best composed pictures.  I have about 40 pictures that I feel are worth printing.  Of those there are about 5 that I will have blown up to 24x36 and framed.  The others will be used as source materials for drawings or paintings. 

I've seen others obsess about deleting pictures as soon as they've taken pictures.  This is narrow minded in my opinion.  What they should be doing is taking multiple pictures, and trying to catch the moment.  If you obsess about how they turn out after each one is taken you are not going to catch the happy accident that leads to mindblowing pictures, because you are too busy fiddling with the camera.