It's the camera's fault!

Towards the end of this school year, a beginning digital photography student came up to me, crying “There’s something wrong with this camera! It takes like ten seconds before it clicks!”

To this, I responded, “Sounds like there’s something wrong with the photographer, not the camera."

Don’t worry, after I made my smart-ass comment, I explained that her shutter speed was set to 10 seconds and showed her how to lower it. However, I was quite surprised to hear this. She had been in the class for three months and the first thing students learn in Digital Photography is how to set the right exposure and the relation between shutter speed, aperture, and ISO, and how they affect your photos. Aside from that, what saddened me the most was not that she didn’t now how to change her shutter speed, but it was that she blamed her mistake on the camera.

I hear many excuses from photographers on why there photos are not as good as they should be, and most of the time, it boils down to the same thing: it was the camera’s fault. “It looked better on the LCD!” Yeah, well, everything looks better on a 2.5” screen.”The camera wouldn’t focus!” There’s this old technique, it’s called Manual Focus. The camera is a tool, you have to tell it what to do. “But that’s what Program mode, Auto White Balance, and autofocus are for!” Sure, but you’re not going to get the results you want. It’s not the camera that makes the images, it is the photographer behind the camera. If you want to make better photos, you must learn how to use you’re camera to your advantage. After all, you’re the one making the photos, you should be controlling every aspect of what they look like, not the camera.

I’m not trying to sound all high-and-mighty and act like I always get everything right. Honestly, I have done this before, too. I’ve blamed the focus on the lens, blamed the quality on the camera, and blamed the not-wide-enough composition on my camera not being full-frame. But, this is something I have been trying to work on. And I promise you, if you take a moment to think about why a certain photo is really out-of-focus, or why the color is off, I’m sure you’ll realize that it is your own fault. The good thing is, you can change that, all it takes is some learning. Unfortunately, there are those photographers who think they have learned all they need to know, and refuse to take in any new information. But let’s save that complaint for another time. ;)

Anyways, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it is never the camera’s fault. Cameras, and lenses, are machines, which means, at some point or another, they will break or falter. I’m just saying that, about 99% of the time, it is a mistake on the photographer’s part.

The Beginning

I think I'm going to start writing again. I mean, seriously writing, not just for school assignments. I think school assignments take all the fun out of writing. When you write for yourself, there's no deadlines, no pressure, no standards to meet, and it doesn't have to be about a certain topic or follow a certain set of "rules" outlined for you. It's much more carefree.

I have been working on a school assignment. I know what you're thinking; "But it's summer!". Yes, it is. Unfortunately, Mrs. Walters, the AP Language and Composition teacher, doesn't seem to understand that. The first assignment I have to complete this summer is a biography of my literary life. I am fairly certain this is the most difficult writing assignment I have ever been given. Normally, words pop into my head faster than I can pen them when I write. But not this time. I can't even come up with a thesis. I think I know the problem. I honestly don't have a literary life anymore. I used to, that's for sure. It used to be that I would stay up until 3am reading or I was constantly jotting ideas down for narratives I came up with on my own, without directions from a teacher. But not anymore. Lately, the extent of my literary life has consisted of school assignments, writing bodycopy for yearbook, and reading Zeb Andrews' "essays" that sometimes accompany his Flickr posts.

Being told to write a biography of my literary life has made me realize that, somewhere along the lines, I forgot how much I enjoy reading and how naturally writing comes to me. In my biography of my literary life, I wrote that literature "transports me to another world, where I can put my worries aside for a moment". It was an outlet for me, much like my photography. Whenever I was feeling stressed, I would curl up in my bed with a good book or take out a piece of paper and start scribbling. It's no wonder I have been feeling so stressed lately; I haven't taken the time to do either of those.

So, my plan, from now on, is to get off the internet, say goodnight to Luna (my MacBook Pro), pull out my notebook, and start writing. And hopefully, those writings will make it on here, because I want them to serve some purpose, not just sit in a journal and collect dust. Most of my writings will just be my thoughts, which may be somewhat boring or quite random. And, just so you're forewarned, I do a profuse amount of complaining.