My Photographic Past

Like most people, my main experiences with cameras growing up and in my adult life mostly surrounded having fun taking pictures of family and friends, and out-of-the-ordinary experiences such as vacations or camping trips. These photos serve a great purpose - archiving the important things in life that happen right in front of our eyes. Possibly the main reason  we want to archive these things is no so we can review them at a later date, as our memories do a great job at that. Photographs can be shared with others, offering them a glimpse into your life experiences second to only to having actually been there.

These photographs we take to archive and share our lives… they are photos, of course, but possibly better refered to as snapshots. This helps to define them as informal and fairly quick or spontaneous. That's not to say that a great photographer can't capture great shots in the same manner. They just leverage their experience in composition and timing and have the right equipment and/or equipment settings to separate their results from the average snapshot. Beyond that, photographers also plan many shots, sometimes taking hours to get just the right shot, and that's not something most of us have every tried to do. Without really knowing what we're doing, it would be hard to spend more than a few minutes preparing for a shot once the subject is in place. In fact, the goal is often the opposite.

I learned a few photography basics a couple years back when Traction needed to get a better camera in-house. I did some quick and decisive online research and got a pretty decent DSLR camera (Canon EOS 40D) so we could shoot photos of our clients' events for PR purposes. I stretched my knowledge just a bit and purchased a white seamless table and 3 1000 watt continuous lights for product photography and video. I learned the proper settings for this and never took the time to actually learn what I'm doing.

A few months ago, after watching our Creative Director, Tanner Tate, purchase up a new camera and quickly learn to turn out some great shots, I got the bug and finally started getting into photography. 

That pretty much sums up how I got into this hobby and some of my thoughts about it. I'll soon follow up with other posts outling how I went about choosing my equipment, how I'm educating myself, where I'm getting inspiration, and how I manage my digital photography life.