*slap*

I’ll be honest. Actually, what a ridiculous way to start, what’s the point in not being honest on your own blog? The only time you should be dishonest is when you’re claiming to be the King of Finland. After all, it’s a republic, there’s not going to be anyone else saying they were there first…

I’ve gone astray. I’ll start again.

Up until a couple of days ago I was having a bit of a confidence crash. Whether it’s just because I just don’t get enough time to take as many photos as I’d like. That I’m still not confident in the basics of my camera let alone the twills and frippery. That other people’s photos just simply look better than mine. That it’s probably a mix of the above.

Looking at my photos I wasn’t seeing any sparkle in them, and more worryingly, not seeing the reason why I took it in the first place. They were flat, tawdry, [insert similar adjectives here] collections of pixels. That little LCD screen on the back of my camera was a liar, promising such riches but when looking at the results on a monitor it just delivered 18 megapixels of humdrum.

Then, as occasionally happens, a little random event picks you up, dusts you off and tells you to stop being so bloody stupid.

In this case it was a Spaniard.

In an attempt to pimp my photographs across as wide an area of the internet as possible there’s a few sites that I share them on, one of which is called 500px. Like most other similar sites people can show appreciation for each other’s work and even buy them if they want (although so far no-one has wanted. Hint hint.). They can also comment on them and, out of the blue, I received the following comment for the following photo:

“Dan Preciosa foto. empiezo a seguir tu trabaja. Un saludo desde Barcelona”

Now, as my Spanish is a bit rusty, much in the same way that the sea is a bit wet I had no idea if I was receiving a compliment or being accusing of some variety of activity with a close member of the commenter’s family.

Google translate ahoy!

“Beautiful photo Dan. Begin to follow your work. Greetings from Barcelona”

This was just what I needed. To be honest the photo in question is one of my favourites so the fact that someone I’ve never met (and pre-comment didn’t even know existed) thinks the same was a bit of a boost and an opportunity to change my mindset.

As such I kindly request that, if I ever seem to be getting maudlin about photography, whoever is closest gives me a sound slap around the chops to snap me out of it. Though to be honest I did start myself off.

‘I’m not confident using my camera.’

*slap* Read the manual, check tutorials online, go out and press random buttons when taking pictures and see what happens

‘I don’t take that many photos.’

*slap* You’ve got legs haven’t you? If you get a spare few hours go out for a wander and get snap-happy.

‘Other peoples’ photos are better than mine.’

*slap* So? What do you want to do? Give up? What is it that appeals to you about their photo? Learn from it, remember it and use the same technique yourself.

‘My face really hurts.’

*slap* Can’t help you with that one…

One Sunday Morning

An admission: From time to time I can become quite focused on one thing, become slightly obsessive only for it to be discarded when it loses its sparkle. (I’m pretty sure there’s a specific word for this but, slightly worryingly for a word-based medium, I can’t think of it at the moment.) Hopefully I don’t do the same with this blog but if it does suddenly stop mid-sentence you’ll know what’s happe…

Only joking.

It’s the same with my photographs too, quite often I’ll be chuffed to bits with an image only to come back to it a few weeks/day/hours later and suddenly realise it’s a dull, lifeless, poorly shot waste of pixels.

Not always though, there’s a hardcore, only a handful mind, of photographs which have stayed in my mental folder called ‘Not too bad actually’. This is one of them.

It was taken completely at random one Sunday morning and I think that’s partly its appeal. The eye belonged (well, still belongs) to my wife (at the time girlfriend) I don’t have the exact date it was taken but it’s at least five years old and was during that early, exciting, yet still quite fragile, part of the relationship. We were in bed, she was reading a book and, in a childish attention seeking moment I grabbed my camera and fired off a shot. I don’t think I even bothered to look at the picture until a little while later but when I did I was rather surprised to find the above image instead of the expected blurry mess.

I normally try not to break down exactly what I like about an image too much in case the act of taking it apart causes it to loses the magic leaving me with a handful of coloured dots, no idea how to put it back together and, inexplicably, two Ikea screws and a washer. That said, if I just put ‘I just like it cos I do.’ then it’s not going to be the most insightful bit of blog ever.

There’s a few things that seem to make it so appealing, all of which are wrong.

The lighting was just from the only source available, the bedroom window, and is wrong.  Nowhere near perfect and far too harsh the left-hand side is burnt-out and pure white whilst the background on the right-hand side is virtually black.

The (wrong) lighting has washed out most of the colour, meaning that’s not right either. There’s not a huge amount of colour to start with, mainly skin & hair, leaning towards the red end of the spectrum so the swipe of almost-neon green on the glasses, just the faintest hint balances it out. I would get my colour wheel out at this point and start wittering about radial direction but it has a puncture.

There’s the composition, which is completely wrong. Never, ever have the focal point bang in the middle of the picture. Ever.

On top of this there’s the resolution, which admittedly is not wrong as such, just rubbish. In those days the 3mp point’n’shoot was, if not the weapon of choice, more like the weapon I could afford. As such the size above is the biggest this image will ever get without going all blocky, pixelated and generally wrong.

Thinking about it there’s only one thing right with the above image, and that’s the focus which to be honest is pretty bang on. I’m not sure whether it’s something to be proud of that on a random click of a shutter the pupil is perfectly sharp or annoyed that it happened by pure fluke, unlike so many other planned photos which have looked fine but I’ve zoomed in to find that the focus is juuuuuuuuust out.

Despite the flaws, in fact probably in no small part because of them, this is one of my favourites. It’s a snapshot, almost accidental, less than a second in time yet it’s better than something I could’ve spent hours setting up, shooting frame after frame after frame until by the end I’m left with a pile of near-as-dammit identical but all equally unsatisfying images and no option but to choose the one I unlike the least. I guess, for me at least, this photo has a certain ‘I don’t know what’, or as the French would say: ‘I don’t know what’ (but in French).

To put it another way, I just like it cos I do.