Serendipity

I've spent a lot of time over the past few months learning about photography, but I hadn't gone out on a picture-taking excursion since May, so it was time to get out there again.

After work on a Wednesday night when Becky had taken the kids to her mother's, I went down to Lake Sammamish State Park with my camera in the hopes of getting some nice evening shots of the lake and nature. I focused mainly on this tree that looked kind of creepy against the sunset, figuring that from some angle this was going to work. Unfortunately after I pulled the pictures into Aperture, there was nothing in there that seemed very good. I also took a few flower shots, but they were also mediocre.

This was a disappointment to me. After all of this studying and playing with my camera, I went out to what I figured was a pretty photogenic park and came back with nothing.

Then the next day I worked from home so that we could all take Kyla to her first day of Kindergarten together, and it rained that morning. I looked into our backyard and saw the dahlia that Becky had planted during her gardening kick when it hit me, flowers look best right after it rains (you can also cheat and hit them with a spray bottle, but this was the real deal).

I grabbed my camera and tripod and managed to get a few shots in before we had to leave for school, and one in particular came out very well. After getting in onto my Mac I did a little touching up and reduced the saturation and vibrancy, and the result is what I now think of as one of my best images.

Sometimes you go in search of beauty and never find it, sometimes beauty just shows up in your backyard. Now I understand that photography is one part skill, one part serendipity.

A New Hobby

When I first bought my SLR, I really just wanted to take nicer pictures of the kids. I knew that a bigger camera with a larger sensor and better optics than a point and shoot would yield much higher quality photos, and it has. However, my camera and photography in general has become my new obsession.

It's actually a very rewarding hobby when you think about it. There are a lot of people to talk to and get tips from, I have several friends who consider themselves to be amateur photogs. Whenever I get a nice shot I can upload it to Flickr or even print it out and hang it up.

Photography also gets me to exercise the right half of my brain, which I don't call upon all that often. Of course it's a fairly technical craft that involves a lot of work on the computer, so I'm not too far out of my comfort zone.

There are many great resources to learn from. I've read two books on photography: The Digital Photography Book and Understanding Exposure. I've also been listening to the This Week in Photography podcast and watching the Photography 101 video podcast. Where does someone with two young children find the time to watch/read/listen to all this? Now you know why I prefer riding the bus to driving to work.

I had an excursion to Alki Beach for some pure photography fun that went pretty well, though I haven't really had the opportunity to duplicate that success. I'm not getting an ego (yet), I feel like those pictures were decent for someone who didn't know what he was doing, not compared to what a real photographer could do.

So it is fair to say I've found myself a new hobby, which is great. Plus I've accomplished my original goal of stepping up my game with taking pictures of the kids.