There is a difference between good photography and great photography. There’s a reason why no one would pay a penny for my photographs while there are people on photo.net whose photographs are earning money in thousands. I could hand one of those high-earning photographers my camera and give the same subject, their photograph would be something I could’ve never imagined clicking myself. I don’t say that I strive to be like them (cuz chances are next to none that I’d be able to) but I surely want to learn what they know theoretically speaking.

Almost all great photographs possess:

• attention to detail
• photographic skill

… but what makes one photo better than the other is the creative aspect … the pushing of limits … the personally unique expression that is more than just documentation …

For the creative exposures to occur, it is necessary to understand how photographs happen. Pati (husband) has been insisting on me ever since I got my new camera that I need to learn the ‘physics’ behind photography. Me being me – the eternal evader – I haven’t really listened to him … and started dabbling with the basics that ended up being routed in physics anyhow. :| I hate it when he is right but I must admit it that he is right. Without the knowledge of physics, we might learn to get the ‘correct‘ exposure with trial and error strategy but we’ll never learn how to get the ‘creative‘ exposure as we perceive it every time we press the shutter button. The consistency of creativity is the goal if one wants to pursue photography as a hobby or a career.

Even though we have digital cameras and can afford deleting unwanted pictures, a photographer with experience and know-how of his camera never needs to take a picture twice to get it right. She gets it right the first time … every time she clicks it … consistently.

And that, my dear friends, should be our goal.

In future lessons, we’ll learn to move away from the comfort zone of Automatic shooting and venture into the world that real photographers have long known.

play on aperture

the arc

play on aperture again

husband's fave: Voyeurism ;)

Firetrucks and ambulances became a common sight for a few days:

To kick things off at a high note, I post this as an entry to a contest on Point & Shoot over at Cuckoo’s blog. This month’s theme is Clouds.

The following three photos were taken by me on September 12th evening a few hours before Hurricane Ike hit the Gulf Coast. I viewed the clouds as a forewarning of the fiery wrath that was to come next and tried to play on the ‘wrath emotion’ ;p :

The next two photos are also taken within a few seconds of the picture above although with varying aperture and varying shutter speed to get a different effect.