Mountains and Goals

(04-30-2010: Canon Rebel Xsi, 1.4 lens, cropped and edited in Photoshop)
click on image for enlarged view

I've been challenged by other blogger photographers. They advocate a rather "easy" formula for improving your photography.

1. Take your camera everywhere and shoot some photos everyday.
2. Read some part of your camera manual everyday.
3. Study the works and writings of the master photographers - past and present.

I am feeling more and more comfortable carrying my camera around - not literally around my neck - but taking it with me whenever I get in the van, such as when I take my daughter to school in the mornings or to functions such as the play my daughter was in the other night. If you don't have your camera with you, you not only miss the shot, you miss "taking the shot." You miss the practice.

Someone said that really good photographers get the shots they want because they know their camera inside and out - like the back of their hand - they don't even have to look at their camera to know what settings they are changing, etc. There's a big difference in performance between someone who types everyday without looking at the keys and someone who types rarely and has to look at the keyboard for every stroke.

Personally, I always enjoy studying the work of masters - music, writing, painting, and now, photography. It is inspiring to see their personality, style, creativity, and even their experiments that have become classics! I've also noticed, across the board in the arts, that the person who "owns" what they do - (the art is really theirs from the inside of their gut) - are the ones who blow everyone, standing around them. out of the water when they present their work.

Can you tell I'm jazzed? I am, and, now, I pass the challenge on to you!