Making It Difficult for Everyone Else

(AKA My Photographic Journey So Far)

I’ve been taking pictures pretty much my whole life. One of earliest favorite photos is of my teddy bear, Logan, stuck up in a tree on an overnight trip at Camp Hemlock in maybe 1985. I framed it, and it lived on my bedroom wall for nigh on decades. I took pictures all through high school and college, all the years I lived in NYC, on all my vacations and trips abroad. Some of them I still even like! Some I love! And some I look at, cringe, and wonder what I was thinking.

I bring all this up now because in the last few years, I’ve gotten a lot more serious about my hobby, and in the last couple of months, even more so. I did my first Project 365 in 2010, starting with images like this, from a Canon Powershot point-and-shoot:

And about halfway through the year, upgrading to my first DSLR, a Canon Rebel T2i:

That was my first big leap forward in terms of technique. I loved my new camera, carried it everywhere, shot everything, and read as much as I could find to learn how to better use it.

In October 2010, I got my first copy of Lightroom, took a class, and learned how to overedit images:

In January 2011, I had this little guy, and wanted to capture every nose wrinkle, every smile, every move he made:

I did that for a while, and I’m pretty happy with a lot of the pictures I have from Sean’s first year. In 2012, I decided I wanted to do another year-long photo project, but I decided on a self-portrait challenge — weekly instead of daily, so while I was going to get in front of the camera for a change, it wouldn’t be every day. At the time, there was weeks when I was so annoyed and frustrated by the whole process, but I’m so glad to be able to look back at the images now and see myself with my family.

About halfway through the year I signed up for a course on self-portrait photography, learned a little more, and put it into practice.

With another yearly project completed, I bit the bullet and said yes to another Project 365, and started again in January of 2013. I got some great ones right off the bat:

And was able to take what I learned in photographing my family and apply it when I traveled, as with this shot in Florence:

But I still wanted to get better! I had a new puppy to chase after, and in August, another baby:

I didn’t want just posed, static shots of the kids. I wanted real memories of our life. I wanted my images from Nia, and of cosplay to reflect how cool I thought they were, how much I loved them:

I kept practicing, finding a few more blogs to read, a few more techniques to try, all while staying mostly on aperture-priority, though I experimented a bit with shutter speed for some night sky pictures. I played with my lens, and took a metric ton of pictures on our vacation to Whidbey Island earlier this year.

In October, I figured I’d gone just about as far as I could go on my own, and asked for advice on Facebook:

Finally, I joined ClickinMoms, and suddenly I was learning new stuff in Photoshop, playing with shutter speeds to get spooky shots SOOC, trying out back-button focusing, and finally switching to spot metering. A few months ago I didn’t even know what those things WERE!

Today, finally, I even took a few shots on full manual, setting my own ISO, aperture, and shutter speed.

It’s not brilliant, but it’s a start. I just won a study along seat in a class on ClickinMoms called “Photographing Your Family’s Everyday, Extraordinary Days, and Everything In Between”, so hopefully, I’ll get even better at capturing those magical moments. If you’re curious, our pre-assignment was to put together an album of our favorite images of our family, limited to about 50, which you can check out here. Even though I don’t have to do the work, I figure the best way to “study along” is to do everything, even if I’m not being critiqued.

Getting all the way back to the title of this post, it speaks to a conversation Doyce and I had on Saturday morning, where he commented that with each new thing I learn about photography, and each new way I modify my camera use, I make it harder to just hand the camera to someone else and ask them to take the shot. But I guess that’s what our phones are for, right? Or maybe I can upgrade my DSLR, and take my Rebel back to AV-priority and shutter focus, for those moments you just need someone else to help push a button.