Fire!

Today there was a fire at the neighbors. I think noone got hurt, thank goodness. But three firetrucks, two command cars, police, ambulance - and all the neighborhood came flocking. That made the neighbor dog kind of crazy. And that's no little deal, she is such a nut case already.

Of course I took a photo or two.

The bull that nests just across the road from us got so exited with all the commotion, he had to try and Beeeeeep the Ram. Poor Ram, he's not made for that kind of "fun".

And now for something completely different.

Or at least, now for some thoughts about learning curves. I'd like to take a photo to show learning curves one day. I'll just have to think a bit about how to approach the subject. (It should be someone really sweating over her work!)

The learning curve of photography is, I dear to say a pretty steep one as learing curves go. But even though it's hard to hang on to all the new stuff you have to digest as a green & ignorant newbie, it's fun. Not the least because there is a lot of people who want to share experiences, ideas and knowledge with you.
As a photographer - a drawer of light - you have to know a great deal about a great number of things to find the big and small differences between a good and an excellent image. Well, in the beginning maybe you have to learn how to separate really crappy photos from the good ones too. - And we have to know these things because knowledge gives us the tools to learn from our mistakes and to know how to avoid them in the future, and also knowledge shows us what we really want to catch in the Camera Obscura - what a good photography really is.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to have been born with a single lens reflex camera in your hands; in other words, to have been born an improbably, naturally brilliant photographer, genius par excellence? I don't think anyone's experienced that just yet. So in the meantime, the rest of the photographer world have had to deign down to hard work and long hours of study and experiments and ... boring stuff. Anyone who chose to be a photographer rather than an art painter must at some point discover that the choice was a bad one, if it was made out of a dull & lazy hope of having to put less work and effort into their career.

I have to admit, amateur that I am (with a very long and hard way to climb on the learning path of my Mount Photo Everest), I have to admit that some times I loose my guts and feel that I lack creativity, I sense that I know too little theory, I notice that I take too many shortcuts and tend to do lazy but lousy choices, I don't think my gear is good enough ... But then, despite myself, I experience a general improvement in my photo abilities - not the least when I take the trouble of reading & studying a little beforehand and when I overcome the urge to do shortcuts and "the easy way".

"Oh noes, not another photo session Mama?"

Today's recommended web site: http://www.photoquotes.com/  - And from that site:

I think if I ever get satisfied, I’ll have to stop. It’s the frustration that drives you. 

- Eve Arnold

The Virgin Voyage

I hope this to be the first post of many here on Photomnia, dedicated in one way or another to photography. The plan is to post photos, of course (it would be a special but dull blog if no images were included), but also to say something about photography, share experiences, good links to information, inspiration and motivation. In short, I will make this blog into something I would have liked to read myself.

Hopefully so will others, so that I get to share some good stuff around. There is never too much good stuff to share around!

"Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst" 

- Henri Cartier-Bresson

In these digital ages, maybe we should up that to a million?