Browsing some photographs on my iPhone recently, the person cutting my hair asked me how I became so interested in photography. Trying to think back, I’m realizing somehow happened very gradually. I can identify a few defining moments along the journey, but it is still hard to identify how it turned into such a passion.
In June of 2007, a few months after I bought my first DSLR, a Canon Rebel XT, I casually ordered a couple of technical photography books from Amazon. Months later, I began reading ‘Understanding Exposure’, it became blazingly obvious that I didn’t even know how to control my camera. I didn’t understand the basic controls at all. I shot on ‘Program Mode’ and treated it like a point and shoot, and pretty much took snapshots.
So, I put a bookmark in that book, put it back on the shelf, and I decided that I would learn every function on my camera. I found an after market book on Amazon that not only explained the functions of the camera much better than the painfully dry manual that came with the camera, but also provided examples that made it easy to understand why I cared about the various settings. I gravitated to Aperture Mode, like most photographers I later found out. I learned about ISO’s affect on shutterspeed. And lots of things.
I made it most of the way though that book, but most importantly, I was now on a journey: reading and learning and shooting. As I learned the camera, I also began to better on when I would use a combinations of settings. It seemed overwhelming at first (and it still does at times.) But I just kept reading and slowly built up a framework to grow my understanding. And I continue to add to that framework of knowledge as I continually learn more and more.
Photography is a exciting ocean of things to explore, and for me, gets more fun with each new topic I embrace and put to use. So come on aboard, and we’ll take this journey together…
Rocky Mountain Joe
Boulder, Colorado
14 November 2009
