There comes a time in every amateur photographer’s learning curve when they come across an image that requires them to pause and ask, ‘am I ever going to be that good?’ All the nice little macro images of blossoming sunflowers and the ever-active cockroaches under the bed that they just uploaded on Flickr somehow seem a little off-target compared to the image in question. As they twiddle their thumbs, alternately glancing at their new 55 – 2000mm AF YU FG KK BC !! lens crafted from ores harvested from Proxima Centauri and the stack of unpaid bills that were themselves beginning to look threateningly like a meteor shower, the sense of urgency seems to heighten. At this juncture, the usually reassuring comments like ‘You’re a Photographic Genius, Comment 5, Post 1′ somehow seem unable to overshadow the burgeoning question, ‘Am I talented?’
Err…no. The plain and simple truth is that everyone cannot be as gifted as I am. But let’s just put that handicap aside for the time-being (since there’s very little you can do about the fact that you’re not me). How can you make progress? How can you get *almost* as good as I am? Huh? Heh? Hmm? Quite frankly, the easy way is to kill yourself instantly and pray that you are reborn with a little more talent (on second thought, you might want to do it the other way round). A roundabout way of achieving the same thing is to use the following resources:
Light, Science and Magic: If Photography were to turn into a religion in the future, there’s a very distinct possibility that this book would go on to become the Bhagavad Gita/ Bible/ Quran/ Zend Avesta/ <fill here>. First published in 1997 (I don’t really know that, and I don’t care – just needed something to start the sentence with…), this book takes you through the basics of lighting in the context of still photography. That, it does through some easily replicable photographic exercises, illustrated through very detailed lighting diagrams. In fact, what you read in my previous post was a rather shameless reconstruction of one of the exercises from this book. The text is lucid, and instead of just ordering you around to ‘place gelled light at 45 degrees to left of camera’, it in fact explains why you should place gelled light at 45 degrees to left of camera’ and how it would impact the final photograph. What this does is give you the necessary dope and the confidence (funny how both of these always seem to come together) to think through your own shots and try variations. And in fact it is these variations that contribute the most to your learning. Get it here! You will not regret it. If you do, I promise to get rid of your copy for free.
Strobist.com: Mercilessly stretching the religious motif further, David Hobby is perhaps the Johannes Gutenberg of Photography. Prior to the craze that is Strobist.com, photography was an elitist pursuit, reserved for a very niche kind of people who were either already well known professionals or were not bogged down by the mundane details of life like responsibility and having to earn a living. Credit goes to David Hobby for peeling off, layer by layer, the mystique that surrounded photography and make it more accessible. Through his blog, he suddenly made people realize that one need not necessarily have lights the size of airplanes and equipment that merited visits from UN inspectors every other week, to take decent photography – just a tiny little strobe is enough. In fact, the Strobist website attacks this idea with a vengeance – an often reinforced theme here is to make-do with whatever is around, rather than investing in expensive equipment and writhing in guilt every time the folks at home made a fuss about the disconnected phone line, the erratic electricity supply or the irregular milk supply.(Alternately, he could also be blamed for the deluge of blogs on photography by talentless idiots, who insist on dishing out crap in the name of photographic knowledge – a specimen here). Through a series of articles imaginatively called Lighting 101 and 102, the Strobist website takes one through the basics of off-camera flash, and how it can be used effectively to create professional looking photographs without having to file for bankruptcy. There is an ‘On Assignment‘ section that’s dedicated to the dissection of photo shoots that helps one recreate the same. Also, there are Boot Camps (currently, Boot Camp 2 is on) that offer assignments that the readers can participate in. (I rocked assignment One of Boot Camp 2 – see here!). And in case one is at a loss as to where to start, there are the Strobist DVDs that pretty much encapsulate everything one needs to know to catch up – find them here. Lastly, there is a very large following of the website present on the dedicated Flickr group – this is a very active and helpful community that one can learn a lot from (barring the occasional Off-topic post on burning issues like ‘A Bride threatened me with a shotgun…‘).
To be continued…
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Comments ( 2 )
Talent: Stop Kidding Yourself & start googling | rOllon…
A nice post on how to get started on photography, including tips and tricks one can find on the net to get started….
www.rambhai.com added these pithy words on Jul 11 09 at 12:04 amthanks for the very informative post. I am planning to prepare a photo project for my batch as our MBA is getting ovr. The websites mentioned will definitely help.
deepansh added these pithy words on
Dec 26 09 at
10:37 am
