2011, My Year in Photography: jimpossible84

jimpossible84

2011, My Year in Photography

Jan 04, 2012 18:12

I first got interested in learning about photography back in college when I received a 35mm film SLR (Pentax ME-Super) as a Christmas gift, but, over the years had gradually gotten to where I was only taking pictures at Christmas, birthdays, and vacations. I had also drifted away into P&S cameras and our first couple of digital cameras were P&S. I got my first digital SLR camera (a Pentax K-x) Christmas of last year and have fallen back in love with photography. I even stunned myself with the fact that I had taken over 6000 pictures in the last year with my new toy. There's just so many things to experiment with and ways to capture images. I've thrown away a lot, but kept most. I've found that digital is a much easier and quicker way to actually learn and practice photography. Mistakes are easier to identify and correct due to immediate feedback and relative ease of trying different settings, exposures, and framing, as well as the ability to alter the virtual film speed to the conditions.

I have seen many other people out using fancy DLSR cameras and I can't help but notice how they have their exposure mode wheel set and that most have them set in "Auto" or "Green" (P&S) mode. Experience has shown me that if you shoot in "Auto" mode, which is handy for occasions where you have to be prepared to shoot suddenly, your pictures will be pretty much the same as what you can capture with a much smaller, more convenient, and less expensive P&S camera. I don't see a lot of point to purchasing a DSLR camera and lenses to shoot P&S. I find myself manually adjusting the exposure compensation and the other parameters in order to do more challenging captures and to get better results. I purchased my DSLR with the intent to further master and practice the art of photography with the skills I learned with my manual film camera and adopting them to the digital world, which opens up additional parameters to control and all sorts of additional possibilities for photographic expression. This has made photography fun and challenging for me again!

After seeing a couple of these "Year in Photography" posts recently, I've decided to do one myself. I've compiled a small album here with a picture from each month of the year that I feel best represents my first year in digital photography. I've learned a lot during the last twelve months and (hope) that my photography skills have improved somewhat during that time, and I've had a lot of fun in the process! It has also been fun for me to go back and look at what I've done and at some of the earlier ones and thinking "why did I do that like that?" or "I would definitely change such and such if I were shooting that today!"! Anyway, if you've read this far, thank you and I hope you enjoy the visual part of the tour below! If you are interested in these and more of my photographs, please visit my Flickr site at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/53919821@N03/.

January
February
March