Creative Blur

Back in the days when I used a film camera I sent my used films to a lab to be developed. For a while I couldn't understand why some of my photos didn't come out. In my ignorance I believed that those negatives were blank.

But after a while I realised that wasn't the case. When I inspected the negatives there was definitely something there. But what? The person operating the printer was making value judgments on my behalf and only printing what he or she regarded as successful photos.

As it sometimes took me several weeks to fill a film, by the time it went to the lab I often didn't remember what was on it. I was desperate to know what had gone wrong so I started instructing the lab to print all the negatives, even the "bad" ones. That was when I discovered how often my creative experiments were rejected by someone who had no idea what I was trying to achieve. How could I learn from my mistakes if I didn't know what they were?

Thankfully with digital cameras that's no longer an issue.

I hate to think what the lab staff would have thought of this blurry photo. It was one of my most successful photos of 2021 - my first photo ever to win a virtual ribbon at DPChallenge.

The challenge was "Late". My title was "Rush". Without the blur it would have told a very different story.

It's easy to take blurry photos. Sometimes it's hard to get them right.

Too Close for Comfort

I spent a long time recently taking photos of the bees on a tree in my garden. I wasn't happy with the results.

Bees aren't easy subjects. The ones I was watching were very active, making it difficult to get properly focused shots. And I couldn't get close enough to get detailed shots. I didn't want to risk getting stung.

This shot was taken a few days earlier. A lucky shot when I was concentrating on the flowers from a safe distance. Perhaps that's a better approach for me.

I have this more detailed photo of a bee in my DPChallenge archive - a photo of a dead bee. And no, I didn't kill it.

Stop Right There

The date was April 1st 2020. South Africa had been in lockdown for four days. At that stage the lockdown was expected to last for 21 days; then it was extended for another two weeks before restrictions were eased slightly. But my own personal restrictions remained in place for a lot longer.

By nature I'm an extremely nervous person and I was particularly concerned about the safety of my elderly mother, so it was to be five months before I could pluck up the courage to go anywhere. In all that time I hadn't even been close to a supermarket, opting to order all our groceries online. But five months later it was a decision I'd come to regret. Returning to a new reality was hard.

But back in April 2020 a three week break from normal life didn't seem that serious.

This was another challenge photo. The challenge was "Exiled in Pandemia". My title was "Stop Right There".

Fake Smile

 Although I love taking photos, I don't feel comfortable in front of a camera and will avoid having my photo taken unless I really have to. However, when a photography site called DPChallenge (of which I'm a long time member) held a challenge titled "Goofy Face" in December 2020, I decided to shoot a few self-portraits wearing my favourite mask and a hat. My chosen photo for that challenge is now my profile photo on Facebook and WhatsApp.

When I first made it my profile photo on WhatsApp, a horrified friend phoned to ask if I'd seen it. For some reason it didn't dawn on him that I actually liked that photo and wanted other people to see it. But as long I like it, it doesn't really matter what he thinks.

In August 2021 DPChallenge had a challenge called "The Smile". Most challenges require photos taken during the two week period that the challenge runs, but since the pandemic started they run one challenge per week for any photo one has ever taken on a digital camera, so I decided to use one of the outtakes from the "Goofy Face" challenge.

I didn't want to enter something too similar to the one from the earlier challenge, so I made myself a lot more anonymous in this one. I like the fact that it's not about me, only the mask.

My Third Eye

 

I never go anywhere without a camera. I don't always use it, but it's always there just in case I see something which takes my fancy. 

Sadly, since the start of the pandemic, most of my photos have been taken in my garden. I hope that will change in 2022 and that I'll be able to take "my third eye" to some interesting places.

Until then I've got thousands to old photos to share.

When Photography Feels Like Cheating

 In the good old days BC (before Covid) I was always rushing around and very rarely spent time in my own garden. Lockdown changed that. Although there's not much of interest there, I spent a lot of time in the garden taking photos of the same boring things. Then a few months ago I developed an interest in bird photography. 

The purchase of a Canon M6 Mark II made it much easier to capture birds in flight and allowed me to catch what would previously have been "the one that got away" - photos that my slow reflexes would never have been able to catch without the assistance of pre-burst shooting.

Pre-burst shooting is when you half press the shutter button to focus on your chosen subject and wait until the decisive moment to fully press it. As long as the shutter is half pressed, a special feature on cameras like the M6 Mark II allows the camera to temporarily save 30 seconds worth of shots in the buffer, and a full press will tell the camera to save the last 30 seconds worth of those shots to the memory card. 

I confess in the beginning it felt like cheating. But I soon realised that it still takes effort on my part to get those shots. Effort and a lot of patience.

Here is one of my favourites.

So Bad It's Good

I've belonged to a site called DPChallenge for almost as long as I've owned a digital camera and I've learned a lot from their forums and from participating in their challenges.

One of their recent challenges was to take a photo "So Bad It's Good".

It was a struggle, but in the end I came up with something I was quite happy with. Sadly for this particular challenge no editing was allowed, but I've since produced a couple of black and white versions which I quite like. This one was created using Photoshop on my computer:

I love Photoshop and some of the plug-ins I have at my disposal, but strangely I prefer this version created on my phone using Photoshop Express: