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Keep Trying

My brain is aching.

Heh, been spending the entire evening reading up on flash photography. Urgh, it’s like opening a can of worms. Reading about it led me to topics on light sources, external strobes, when to bounce flash, or use a diffuser etc etc etc. The combinations are endless. For me, learning something new is due to being dissatisfied with what you currently know. I have always preferred to shoot with available light and not using my on camera flash only because it gives unnatural looking light on your subjects and darkens the background. That is of course, until I found out you about dragging the flash.

Techniques aside, I’m amazed what creativity exists among the many photographers out there who shoot events for a living. I guess the best analogy I can come up with is creating a perfect 3 course meal. If you were a total beginner, you might not even know how much heat to apply to your frying pan before you can pop your egg in. I am thinking back on my experiences with cooking. How do you carve up vegetables quickly? How do you do it quickly and evenly and without chopping off digits in the process? It all comes with practise. Being able to cook your main dish does not make you an expert on knowing how to make dessert. Desserts are sweet and use an entirely different range of ingredients. How do you know if the flavours will go together?

This is just how photography feels to me sometimes. I can fry my egg with one hand. It isn’t the perfect egg but it still looks and tastes good. I am good with certain ways of taking photographs, but I’ve been trying and experimenting on so many different forms of it, I’m a little confused on the ideal approach at times.

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Heh, it’s the frustration. You know what you want, but not quite sure on how you are going to achieve it. One thing I do know, is that if I want to learn anything properly, I will just have to keep at it. Unfortunately I’m not smart enough to know things on my first experience with it, but I am persistant enough to dig at it until I finally figure it out.