Okay my geeky friends, what's so funny about this?

So I'm learning about taking pictures... mostly by screwing up.  I'm learning that brilliant midday sun is generally not great to shoot by, at least for the stuff I am trying to shoot.  I'm learning I really really need to stop saying "ah, I'll just leave the tripod in the car, I won't need that".

I'm learning about masking in PhotoShop, and how to use it to airbrush a subject (thanks James for the link), or how to use it with layer blending to rescue a picture that otherwise comes out half overexposed and half underexposed, like the one at right.

Another thing I am learning about is photo composition, what makes a good photo, and what doesn't.  The most basic rule that I keep hearing about is the "rule of thirds".  This rule basically states that you should divide your viewfinder up into 9 equal sized rectangles (basically like a tic-tac-toe diagram), and try to place your interesting subject matter on one or more of the intersection points as opposed to dead-center in the photo.  Theoretically this makes for a more pleasing photo.  Judge for yourself... which is better?

According to the photo pros, the one on the right is far superior.  The top-left daisy falls on an intersection point, and the out-of-focus small daisy falls close to one.  Of course I am also taking advantage of another "rule" in the photo at the right, "groups of three are most pleasing".  Unfortunately I don't always frame my shots this way because I am still learning.

But thanks to photoshop, I can deal with that by cropping the photo.  I built a template that looks like a big tic-tac-toe grid where the squares are transparent.  I simply paste this over my photo in pshop and then resize and reorient it until I have the interesting subject matter on an intersection point (or on a "thirds line"), and then I crop the photo to that rectangle.  Because I start with a grid the same size as my photo and I shrink it proportionally, the resulting shot retains the same image proportions so the cropping is not so obvious.  Then I just delete the layer which has the rectangular grid in it and my composition is repaired.

Another thing I've been learning about is "depth of field".  When the camera shutter opens you have control over how wide it opens.  This is called the aperture.  The wider the opening, the more light gets in (and of course, the faster your shutter has to close in order to avoid overexposing the photo.)  Another interesting effect of the aperture is how much of your photo is in focus.  A very wide aperture leads to only a very narrow range of distances from the camera where things are in focus and a very narrow aperture leads to an extremely large range of distances where things are in focus.  If you are taking a shot of your subject and there is a mountain in the background, you use a wide aperture to keep just your subject in focus, and a narrow aperture to focus both your subject and the mountain.  The range of what is in focus is your "depth of field", and the different aperture settings are referred to as "f-stops" (as in f/1.4, f/2.8, etc...), with larger numbers referring to a larger depth of field (and inversely, a smaller aperture).

For portraits and macros (extreme close up shots, like the daisies above), a wider aperture is recommended  (I used f/4.5 on the three daisies pic, which is why one of the daisies is out of focus).  Using a wide aperture will blur the background so that your subject stands out and becomes the focal point of the picture.  A nicely blurred, even, and nondistracting background seems to be the best, unless it is intended to convey context.  The flickr folks toss around the term "bokeh" (Japanese for "blur") in reference to this effect.

Speaking of backgrounds, you have to think about them a lot.  If your background has too much going on in it, or has a major distracting element, it detracts from the photo.  When I first took the picture of this rugosa rose covered with water droplets I was sure I had a great shot.  But the barn in the background was distracting and various commenters on flickr told me so.  Unfortunately this shot can't be saved by a crop if I want to see the whole rose, but it is a reminder of a good lesson for me, so I hang onto it.

The one exception (as noted earlier) is when the background provides useful context.  If your subject is a guy sitting in an outdoor cafe with a big boat oar leaning against his table, the out of focus image of Venice in the background communicates useful information!

I seem to be pretty good with macro shots.  And some of my landscapes come out nice (and more would if I would start paying attention to the frikkin lighting).  But so far, I'm not good at portraits.  This is mostly due to lack of practice... nobody I know really wants to be photographed hundreds of times while I figure out how to do it right, it's awkward to photograph strangers on the street (but apparently legal if you don't profit by it), and I can't afford to hire a model.  But sooner or later I'll figure something out.  I've taken precisely 2 portraits to date where I was pleased with the result, and only one of them is of any quality.  I definitely need to work on this department.

Here's a little something neat I found on flickr.  Like most big internet repositories, flickr has had a virtual community of photographers that have sprung up around it.  One way it facilitates this is through "groups", also called "pools".  A group is simply a collection of photos that you can submit your photo to.  Typically groups have some sort of theme (like landscapes, cities, cats, clouds, water, or highly specific stuff like "Fitchburg, Massachusetts").  Some groups are intended to help you become a better photographer, in that if you submit a photo, you must critique the N photos that were submitted before yours.  This guarantees input from other people which can be very useful if you are trying something new.

But one of the most interesting groups I've found is called ID Please.  This is a group for submitting photos you took of things you can't identify.  The group members have specialized knowledge, and if they recognize the thing you posted, they'll tell you what it is.  The primary submissions seem to be pictures of flowers, insects, and birds.  But I have seen pictures of all sorts of things go by and get identified, airplanes and vehicles, antiques and apparati, cityscapes and locations, even one person who had taken a picture of something on the ground from the window of an airplane at high altitude and wanted to know what it was.

Since I discovered this group I am rapidly becoming familiar with the local plants and animals in my area.  In exchange for their help, I try to offer information on pictures of birds that are submitted to the group.

All in all, it's pretty neat!  If you've got a picture of something you can't identify, perhaps you should upload it to flickr and submit it to the ID Please group. 

I seemingly disappeared around the first of June and haven't posted a word since, ya?  So where've I been?  The short answer is "taking pictures".

Many years ago I decided I wanted to become better at photography. I always found myself seeing things and saying "wow, that would make a nice picture".  I dreamed of becoming a wildlife photographer and taking pictures of birds. But I didn't really know what I was doing, and I was using a crummy camera.

So in the early 90's I picked up a used Nikon 8008s for a hefty (very hefty) chunk of change and tried using that. The picture quality seemed better but I still didn't really know how to use it and didn't know where to go for advice. I loved taking pictures with it, but given the cost of film purchasing and developing, it became too expensive a hobby for me, and I put the camera away.  (And in the intervening years the camera has depreciated in value to the point where it is worth about 5% of what I paid for it.)

For the last couple years I've used a little Canon Digital Elph (a PowerShot s500) and I have a lot of fun with it. Without the prohibitive cost of film and developing, I can make up for lack of skill in volume. I may snap a couple hundred pictures in a few hours, and of those maybe only a handful are any good, but I'm happy to have that handful.

This having been one of the shittiest years in my life led to my wife wanting to get me something nice for Father's Day that I could occupy my time with.  This coincided wit me taking a renewed interest in 35mm-style SLR cameras.  I still can't afford the film but nowadays they make digital SLR's... so perhaps I could once again embark on my dream of becoming an excellent photographer without the prohibitive cost of film?  With my wife's blessing I started looking into digital SLR cameras.

My friend James had long encouraged me to start publishing my photos on flickr, and given the size of the membership there, that seemed like a good place to go for camera advice.  Checking the camera finder on flickr revealed that the most popular cameras used to produce their database of 525 million photos were the Canon Digital Rebel XT and XTi.  I posted questions on various discussion forums there asking for camera recommendations and talked with friends at work and elsewhere about cameras.  Finally I took a trip to Circuit City to play with the display cameras there and get a feel for them.  All the cameras seemed very cool, but I kept returning to the Rebel XTi... of all of them it felt the most familiar, probably because the icons and controls were similar to my PowerShot s500 which is made by the same manufacturer.

But the price was out of the park.   Circuit City wanted $899 for the camera.  I  was informed by the staff that the camera would come with a "temporary battery" and a small charger, but that neither of those components were standard and that I would need to by the standard ones for serious camera use.  This would be another $140 or so.  Then of course I needed a memory card and it had to be a high-speed (133x) card, which was a mere $50 more.  Add a camera bag to keep my equipment safe ($50), and Circuit City's 4-year warranty ($100) and you were talking about $1250... then add another $63 for sales tax.  Ouch.  I could never afford all this, so I took the information and went home to talk to my wife about it.

She encouraged me to look for deals elsewhere... maybe used equipment on eBay or a less expensive camera like the Nikon D40.  It always pays to comparison shop.  Eventually I checked out B&H Video out of New York (who had sold me my video camcorder a zillion years ago), from them I was able to price the same camera with the same lens for far less.  In fact it was so much less that I could add a camera bag, same exact high speed memory card, a USB card reader, an infrared remote control, and a UV-filter and still come out under the Circuit City price.  The kicker?  The kit B&H was selling came with the standard battery and battery charger at no extra cost.  And there was no sales tax.  After adding shipping it came to about $860.  Pat gave her blessing so I went ahead and bought my very own Canon Digital Rebel XTi.

It arrived on June 4'th, and since then I've been taking pictures pretty much every day.  I am really enjoying myself.  It's quite peaceful really, just contemplating a shot through my viewfinder and taking my time.  My plan (if you can call it that) is to start with still life, landscape, and macro shots. I'm glad my first lens isn't too specific because I also want to be able to use it as my "fam cam" for pix at the annual barbecue and get-togethers with friends and so forth, so for me maybe a more general purpose lens is good.

Once I figure out how to manipulate light (I am hopeless at this), frame a shot (I am dismal at this), and understand the ins and outs of the camera, I'd like to branch out into pictures of people and portraits. I love faces and pictures of people. When I get to that point, it might be a good idea to put away the general lens and get a 2-3 different lenses for when I want to switch between macro, landscape, and portraiture.

And then, maybe someday, if I can really get to the point where I don't suck, I'd love to try and take pictures of birds. I know that's very challenging but it has been a dream of mine for a long time. I love birds. If I can get there (and save up my pennies), I'd like to get a telephoto lens suitable for that kind of photography.

My photographic journey has been uploaded to flickr each day.  Feel free to check out my photostream--unlike my blog it has been very busy.  I've uploaded about 350 photos at this point and my stream has been viewed over 1,000 times.

• My PhotoStream
   
• My Sets -- this page shows the "albums" that I have grouped my photos into

Here are my 12 most popular photos:

I hope my inattention to my blog hasn't been too irritating to y'all.  I'll try to get back here and post more.  But in the meantime, you can find me posting on flickr.

Hope to see you in my viewfinder!

EDIT: The table of images was too wide... my blog was getting all stretched out, added a couple pix and narrowed it up a bit.