notetoself.net

nube photographer musings

no, not “nude”. not today.

one of my revolving hobbies is photography. i have no formal training in photography or any visual art. the photo toys have been just for fun, and i’ve somehow been published here and there in small/local publications without any self-marketing. (i’m including our company security badge photos as a publication)

so, where am i going? what i’ve been doing….. taking generally boring with an occasional, “oh, that’s kinda cool”. i see interesting cityscapes as i ride around, shoot them “as a test” to get to know my gear, delete most shots when i get home and then file them and forget them for a few years. i’ll visit a party/group-ride/event/convention and badly shoot people and shiny things and then send a few shots to some people that were also there, and they thank me, glance through them and forget them. i’ve had some requests to do product shoots which i have chosen to do or not based purely on my personal interest in the subject.

after playing with my newly acquired nikon d300 for the past few days and renting various lenses that i hadn’t tried before, i’ve reached a point where i feel the need to choose more specifically what i plan to do with this expensive and time-intensive hobby. will i ever do photo work for money, and do i really want the extra responsibility that goes with that? should i pass paid work off to “real”, trained photographers or photo students that have given more focus to photography? san francisco photographer Thomas Hawk seems to have skill/gear/exposure without too much defined purpose, and i’m drawn to his less-serious-but-very-active position. his images are used for tech publications that i keep seeing in my feeds. i’m also becoming more interested in dramatic portraiture like Annie Leibovitz does so well.

ok, less rambling. i’ve narrowed my shooting style enough to know i want fast, semi-wide angle lenses for hand-held low-light shooting. other than that, i’ll find out as it happens.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 1st, 2008 at 12:56 pm and is filed under makestuff, musings. Find similar posts by selecting and of the following tags: . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.