I’m not sure exactly why, but suddenly, as I strolled to my bus stop today, passing through the lovely local plaza in Villa del Parque, where I live in Buenos Aires, I thought: I wonder if I can capture this place in only five shots?
I felt a sudden tightness of panic in my chest. A kind of “gulp” panic not felt since my early years working with film, probably during a college assignment, nearing the end of my last roll of 36-exposure Tri-X.
Today I was only carrying my girlfriend’s JPEG-only Lumix point-and-shoot. So the first thing I did was to set the color balance to the “shade” mode, to warm up the cool light in the tree-covered park.
Already my tiny assignment was getting me working. Sure, I know I should set my color balance on my DSLR, and sometimes I do, but more often than not I just snap away with the white balance set to “auto.” (A real dumb and lazy approach considering “I’ll sort this out during raw processing” is definitely not a best practice when recording in the raw mode.)
Continue reading “The Frightening, Eye-Opening Five-Shots-Only”
Tags: Buenos Aires, Five Shots Only, Learning Exercises: Capture, Personal Projects, Pushing Our Comfort Zone, Self-Assignments
Gail Mooney, commercial and documentary photographer and filmmaker, continues to inspire with her honest, insightful writing in her blog, “Journeys of a Hybrid.” The last paragraph of her February 22 post, “Standing on a 10 Foot Frozen Wave,” reads:
“So I looked out over the endless view of frozen waves and into the orange glow of the setting sun. For an instant I became fearful of where I was when I looked behind me and saw a deep crevice that I could easily fall into if I lost my footing. But then I looked ahead to the orange glow on the horizon and I felt hope and with that a sense of security because I knew where I came from and I have the heart and spirit to survive.”
Mooney is finishing up a tale of recently photographing on frozen lake in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan for a personal documentary movie project. She likens her experience on the ice to some of the issues she and other photographers has been facing professionally: Continue reading “When Frozen Professionally, Focus on Your Passion”
Tags: "Journeys of a Hybrid", "Standing on a 10 Foot Frozen Wave", Blogs, Business Inspiration, Documentary Photography, Gail Mooney, Michigan, Personal Projects, Photography Blogs, Upper Peninsula
