Daily photo #1

I am going to be taking pictures daily and posting one of them on this blog along with a short overview of some sort, this is to help me improve as a photographer and even help me move away from my comfort zone to take pictures I would normally not bother with. I do not expect to see anything too exciting until at least a few weeks into this, I feel that that is when I will need to start getting more and more creative so I don't provide the same image over and over.

This image was done with a large sliding glass door, with the sun being the only light source, The sun bounces around the room making everything look so soft.

This is a picture that I had been wanting to take ever since I started learning how to use paint with light, don't mistake this as light painting, using a light source and a long exposure to move the light and paint a surface with it, I like to call any non natural light source that I place in a picture painting with light, to me natural light is light that I cannot physically alter in a photo such as the sun or lights that I cannot move or turnoff, It is true that I can however manipulate the light coming from those but I am not going to go into that. Getting back to this image, I had imagined this image, or actually a very similar image but that did not work as I intended so I worked with the model and achieved something else that I imagined The light on this was simple, just two strobes facing the opposite direction of my model each strobes light was bouncing off of a 3x4' mat board that were about 4 feet away from the model. there are many ways that could be done to light this same image and achieve the similar results.

What is a photographer

What is a photographer? This is a question that I ask myself allot, it is an interesting question to think about because there is a vast array of answers to this question. It is so difficult to answer because to me photography is not just about pressing a shutter release a few times and looking at the shots later to fish for a workable image. A photographer is not someone with fancy gear or someone that is getting paid to take a picture for a yearbook because they have a fancy camera. A photographer is someone that has the capability to effectively use a light sensitive surface to paint with light, paint an image that they knew they were going to make. To me photography is like painting, and if you think about what painting is you can understand what I think it means to be a photographer. A painter can imagine something and know what they want to paint and use a paintbrush and canvas to make their imagination a reality. A photographer is someone who can make their imagination a reality using A light sensitive service as their medium. Different photographers have different views on what makes a photographer though, some people might just say that a photographer is someone that knows how to physically operate a camera manually, some people might say that it is someone that can predict moments that are about to happen and effectively take a portrait of someone on the street. others will say that it is someone that can read light and know how to deal with it, others care more about post processing in the wet lab or digital lab or even just someone actively using any form of camera to document.  all of these are ideal reasons to call yourself a photographer. Me being a studio photographer I view light as my paintbrush and know exactly what I want and how I am going to achieve the image I want, this also keeps me from taking images I would have otherwise taken as I already know what an image will look like and judge based on my views if I want to take it or not. A good photographer is a problem solver.