It’s been a while since I put key to computer and talked about my photographic work. It feels long overdue and to put this right here are some notes that I hope you’ll find interesting.
My recent personal targets have been to sharpen up (if you’ll pardon the pun) my manual focussing skills. It hasn’t let to lots of bokeh, which I guess would be what most people are expecting. It has resulted in quite a few very badly focussed shots but a goodly number of interesting, and bright photographs. I’m a big fan of this kind of challenge. It forces the mind to take a step back and to think not just about the technique itself but also on the impact it will have on the composition. Technology and artistic composition are two of the underlying principles of photography and one cannot thing about these too much.
Of course targeting a technique is all very well, but you need to have something to photograph. I’ve spend some time looking at forgotten parts of my home town and also used a trip to West Wales to help me out. I’ve not been to West Wales for at least a decade so it was a great opportunity to take a fresh look at things.
Here are some my favourites.
You can of course see my photos on Flickr
Flickr houses the largest collection of my work. Red Bubble is a list of those that are available as commercial prints
Image by Chesi – Fotos CC via Flickr
A few days ago I experimented with importing my RSS feed from Flickr. The good side to this was that is easy to pull in recent photographs using this service directly to Findingviews. The part of my that loves automation likes this idea. I update Flickr and the blog updates automatically. It reduces my work and Findingviews gains an update.
Oddly I’m now wondering how good an idea that is.
The reason isn’t particularly technical. Its all revolves around presentation. My general photographs and some basic notes are shared via Flickr. I also sell selected work on Red Bubble. Findingviews isn’t really about repetition of what I already release publically. Its about my thoughts and the images themselves. In other words I don’t want to repeat, repeat and then repeat more. The posts on Findingviews need to have their own intrinsic value, they have to be about something. This means that I will still import photographs from Flickr, but I will write something about these and add some value to the pictures.
I’ve decided not to use the power of RSS to bore you.
I’ve decided to try and entertain you.
Its a question of using the power of the feed in an appropriate manner.
Just because we can, doesn’t always mean we should.