Bench Mark Photos

I guess these are some of my bench mark photos, the ones I can look back on and see how well (or not) I'm getting on. You can view the rest of them at my Flickr site here.

I have started out by firstly getting my Nikon D5000 for Christmas, and then reading my way through the first few chapters of a book called 'Digital Photography Masterclass', written by Tom Ang and published by DK books. It has helped a complete novice like myself go from point and shoot to producing these images, really getting to grips with the basics of the camera. The exercises included in the book are great for getting you to explore new ideas and concepts, and the examples and evaluation of others work is really useful.

I can highly reccomend getting a copy if you want to improve a little more or like me didn't have a clue what to do when you picked up your first SLR.

I hope that when I finaly finish my Art of Photography course that I can look back on these Images and see how far I've come, what I've improved, how my style has progressed. There will always be shots that I hate or didn't come out the way I wanted, maybe I'll come to dislike these images when I have learnt how to control my photography better. For the moment I'm pleased with these images, the improvement from just reading a few chapters in a book has been immense! I just hope my whole learning experience will always be as exciting and invigorating as creating these first photo's were :)

Starting Out

Well, this is my first ever blog!

I've never even kept so much as a diary before. I'm attempting to record my thought and learning process, along with some of my better shots from the Art of Photography course I have just taken up with the OCA (http://www.oca-uk.com). This is my first distance learning course and I have been dying to get back into some form of education for a while. I really feel I need to do something to make a difference to my future, and my abilities have always been in anything that lets me get creative :)

So I guess I should start by saying I don't have a lot of experience in photography, but I seem to have a lot of 'luck' in producing fairly good photos. Now I'm going to learn to turn luck into something of a skill that I can use for myself. I hope by the end of this first course I should have a better idea of what I like to shoot and where my strenths are. I'm just a little tired of being told I'm good at everything, I know I'm not. Ok to be fair I'm 'good' at most things I put my time and effort into, but that doesn't make me the best at them, or good enough to be taken seriously. This is what I'm hoping I will achieve, that I will be good enough to use my new skills as a career, not just 'good' as a hobby or 'good' because my parents like what I've done. I'm doing this because I don't want to end up as just another cog in the machine, I want real proffesional recognition for the effort and progression I make.

Sounds a little depressing I suppose, feeling frustrated because people like what you do but personaly you don't feel its enough. But its giving me the fuel I need to tackle this issue, and if you don't strive to achieve, than you don't get any where!

I would like to explore as much of photography as I can, I'm not afraid to try things that look difficult or unusual, and I'm hoping when I get settled into my work I will be able to let my imagination run free and produce images that are beyond my own expectations.

So for now I'm off to buy stationary (you've got to love the shopping element to all this!) and prepare to start my first exercises, and in the mean time I will get some of my previous shots uploaded so I have some kind of bench mark to view how far I have come in the future.

Sarah :)