First of all I must admit this much:
I am a big fat hypocrite.
“I Just Like Kindles…”
10
The Holy Trinity: ISO
ISO is very easy, but to a lot of people, it seems difficult at first glance. ISO is, in simple terms the sensitivity of the sensor. If you remember back to the days when we used film cameras, we would often have to choose a film based on the conditions we would be shooting in. 100 film for sunny days, 400 for cloudy and indoors etc. These days, with digital sensors, we are lucky enough to just be able to adjust this electronically. Essentially we choose how much the sensor will react to light.
The Holy Trinity: Shutter Speed
When working with Shutter Speed, the important thing to remember is that it is measured in time and it controls movement within the frame.
Picture, if you will, a magic matador. He stands in front of you with his cape hanging down. His cape is the shutter and your eyes are the sensor (or film) that is recording the scene. While his cape is down, you can’t see anything. However, if he flicks his cape up, you will all of a sudden be able to see the bull on the other side running straight for you. If he were to flick the cape down again this would be the end of our analogy. Anyway, let’s stop with this bull stuff.
“The Collector” – John Fowles
Read a book the other day my brother recommended me – The Collector by John Fowles, written and set in 1960s England. An extremely gripping novel that caught my attention right from the start. I won’t give much of the plot away (try not to read the blurb on the back if you enjoy a surprise) but as you can see from the cover, one of the main characters is a butterfly collector.
The Holy Trinity: Aperture
The aperture refers to the hole which the light passes through in the lens. It can change in diameter. The different widths the aperture can be is measured in f stops. If you look into the end of a lens and adjust the f value of the aperture, you can probably see something that looks a little bit like this:
So, contrary to what you would think: Continue reading
The Holy Trinity: Introduction
Ok, this post has nothing to do with religion. Although, if photography were a religion, these would be the three most important words that must be learnt and recited every day:
Monster
Thought I’d just update with a manga recommendation today. This one is called Monster and it is written by Naoki Urasawa. He’s a very popular artist/writer in Japan and was responsible for 20th Century Boys, Pluto and Master Keaton (all of which I recommend). Continue reading
P Mode
The idea behind having a DSLR is that it has so much potential. Recently, so many people drop a lot of money on their cameras in the hope that having a better camera will improve their photography. Unfortunately, having a good camera and not using it to its full potential is no different from just owning any old camera.
That being said, no camera is really bad. You can always do something to make your photos look better. I’m starting this photog101 section on my blog in the hope that I might be able to give some advice or suggestions to teach people how to get better images – regardless of the camera they are using. Also, if there any questions or things you would like to know more about, please write something in the comments or drop me an email. I’ll try to keep my explanations simple, and easy to understand. Continue reading
Short Walk
Went for a short walk this morning. Took my book, took some photos. I finished the book (finally). It was a very short novella by Hemingway called The Torrents of Spring. It was a parody of novels that were being written at the time. Sort of funny, but sad at the same time. It was sad in the way that the whole book was based around making fun of other writers… Sort of depressing. Continue reading
Language
I suddenly realized: I haven’t been making good use of this privilege of mine, to have a voice, to have literacy, to have this space on the web to write and communicate with others, yet not make use of these things afforded to me that others could only dream of having.
I often shy away from writing about real things, in fact, aside from a few essays and speeches I wrote while I was in Japan, I don’t think I’ve exercised my brain and put pen to paper since I was a university student. Of course, having aspirations to write fiction, I’ve written my fair share of short stories, and worked (and given up) on a number of longer fictitious endeavours. But I’ve always kept these to myself and only shown them to close friends. Continue reading
Flickr
Twitter
Facebook