Seeing and Feeling the Image

My good friend Taylor has always had the eye for capturing great images with her film camera. I would always see the pictures she was capturing and know she just was a natural. Up until last week when I gave her the D3000 and 35 1.8 she had never used a DSLR before.

I left the camera in aperture priority set to 400 ISO and that is where it stayed the whole week. Taylor and I have discussed photography and technique in the past but never really went into all out teaching mode. She ended up not switching the ISO or changing the mode in the camera, she just shot. Now this may sound foreign to some of us who are constantly changing modes and settings but for Taylor it was about capturing the moment. Partly because we have yet to discuss what would happen when those modes are changed or what to change them too.

What it comes down to is she focused on capturing the images without worrying to much about being technically correct. She was seeing and feeling the images that she was capturing. This to me is the first step to becoming a photographer. Going out and shooting maybe not knowing why your image is to dark on the subject or why there was some motion blur. This is the begging of seeing the images, composing the images and learning about photography.

I think the most important thing to do when starting out is to just shoot, even if the camera is in full auto just shoot. Focus on composition and the rest will follow in time. If you try to learn what every setting does before you start to see the image you may just get frustrated and put the camera down. Capture first than sit down and go over your images and settings to start to see and understand why certain things happened the way they happened.

When Taylor and I were going over her mages she had some great questions as to why this happened or why that happened. I could tell she was starting to think as a photographer and see her own slight mistakes and correct them while shooting. For example there were two images very close to each other where the first one cut off part of the subject which she than corrected in the second frame. She even said to me yesterday that she is starting to everything as if it were a photograph. That is so awesome to hear, that is what its all about. Starting to see everything around you and thinking to yourself how would I shoot this, what would my settings be, what would my frame be.

Great job Taylor I can not wait to see how quickly you progress and take photography to the next level!!!