Me and My Camera

To me, photography is an art of observation. it’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place….I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them. ~Elliott Erwitt

My boyfriend gave me a camera for my birthday last September and since then I’ve started down the addictive road of photography, frustratingly learning as I went along. He patiently explained to me (and explained again and explained again) all the technical details, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, etc and gave me some tips on composition. I, however, tended to forget all of that once I got outside, excited to have the camera in my hands.

Over the past few months I’ve developed a keener eye and sensitivity to my camera. Picture by picture, I’m starting to understand the artistic and technical dichotomy that makes photography truly magical. The only thing this has really accomplished though is allowing me to realize how far I still have to go.

The BF said to me one day, “That’s just looks nice, you just took a picture of it. You didn’t anything special to it.” After the requisite huffing and puffing I relunctantly agreed. Sure, it was beautiful, but that was the easy part. There was no sort of unique way of seeing that I brought to the image. I remember after the first month or two I had my camera, I started to notice a different way I was viewing the world. Everything was a picture, everything was framed, cropped and rotated in my head. I’d scan the landscapes and see the art in them everywhere. And it was then that I realized that I was finally begining to ’see’.