Tuesday morning, and the snow has mostly stopped.
Bears in the Snow
The Morning Clearing
And some thoughts on phonography:
I've been a photographer since my teens. Studied at one school, worked in the Audio-Visual Dept. at another, where I was the staff photographer and darkroom tech. I was conversant with a wide variety of equipment, in an industrial way; in focus, properly exposed, horizons level, and none of the team had their finger in their nose. Since then, I still do some pro work, documenting fine art, though my equipment choices have gone from SLR-DSLR to a high end compact. I still use lights, battered, and stands, held together with wire, and polarizers. The little camera, at base ISO, on a tripod, and good technique, is image quality wise, going to be comparable to almost anything else out there, and for 99.9 % of the uses, perfect. Plus, when I started using it, none of the DSLRs had live view on the LCD; you need to stoop and look through the viewfinder, while I could look at a 3" LCD.
In my own work, sketches for paintings, my amusement, family, I had discovered early on that a good image could be technically flawed; and in fact, those flaws might enhance the image. Technical perfection is not something I seek, nor am I probably very good at it; adequate when required. ( Certain aspects of painting require a "base" level of technical competence, something akin to grammer for a writer, but more ...?) Which raises another question; what is image quality? Technical perfection, or an image worth looking at? The point here is that technical quality should be subservient to the image itself.
Lately I've been using my phone camera, see previous post, as my casual, walking around tool, and that same tool has been recently featured in some of the photo-centric sites I keep up with. It has not been considered a ... serious tool. In fact, it seems possible that western civilization is in decline due mainly to phone cameras. OK, but it is discreet and quiet. There is only one "setting", focus and exposure, a tap on the screen, then the shutter release, which makes for very quick shooting. It also allows one to concentrate on composition, rather than settings. This basic simplicity, though often asked for as an essential aspect of serious "street shooter" cameras, is ignored on a phone camera, because it's a ... phone? Well, when I need to, I still have the "big" camera, but if you start seeing a lot of noisy, blurred, poorly focused shots here, it's just me practicing phonography, rather than being serious.
This square aspect ratio is quite a departure for me, as my paintings are often 1:2, or close to that, but since it's not serious, I'll continue to fool around. 8-)
Bron
A note: On this day in 1861, Delaware votes not to secede from the Union. I had no idea they were even contemplating it. Delaware was the first state to ratify the United States Constitution.
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