What My Camera Has Taught Me

I have had my Nikon D3100 for about 3 months now and it has taught me some interesting things:

• Walk Slower – as a tall person with a long stride and as a person who is constantly busy, I am always quickly zipping back and forth between this and that. Carrying my camera around has taught me to slow down and look around. I have noticed things I never would have otherwise seen. It is amazing what you are missing until you start being more intentional about slowing down and looking around.
• Context Is Important – often times, I will see something I deem to be ‘cool’ or ‘interesting’, like the dome on an old European church. I pull out my telephoto lens and zoom in as close as possible and get the shot. Later I will pull up the pictures on my computer and scan through them and I realize those photos are no good. I zoomed in too far. While I got a shot really close up to the dome, I completely cropped out the church and perhaps some of the surrounding buildings. The shot is no good because it has no context. A dome by itself means nothing without the church that it sits on. Context is important in all parts of life (not just photography). Nevertheless, rules were made to be broken and removing context on occasion can have just the right effect if you know what you are doing.
• Change Your Routine – with a personal goal of trying to take interesting pictures everyday, I quickly realized how crippling a strict daily routine can be. I do and see the same things everyday and that often doesn’t make for any good photos. So, change your routine. You still have to go to work, but take a different path to get there. You exercise everyday, but try going to a different park or trail.
• Do Something New – the world is at your finger tips and it is 13+ inches along the diagonal. But why ‘experience’ things on your computer screen when you can actually go out and breathe them in and feel them and see it in your own way. You can’t experience everything, but you can do quite a bit if you are intentional about it. And for the things you miss out on, well that is what photographers like me are for.

To see the things I have experienced with camera in hand, check out my flickr photostream and my current photo set, Aperture Lab.