Practice makes perfect..

I do love that sense of improvement and development really paying off.

Looking back over my Blog I have seen how much I progressed in my Photography. Though the first milestone for me was getting into University and starting my course the real beginning was much before that. It's strange how much I didn't know. I suppose I possessed some natural Photography skills. I could already frame my images and take pictures of interesting compositions but I have learned so much about Photography in the last five weeks at University than I ever thought I would. This knowledge is just making my confidence soar and make me really feel that I am getting somewhere. I have been quite skeptical in my abilities in the past as you have something in your work that makes it stand out. As I am writing this I am feeling very silly about why I was so skeptical and I can't really put my finger on the main reason. It's in the past now, so not worth worrying. I suppose progress can be a bit daunting; there will always be times when things will be great but without those mistakes we make, we can't improve, so in a sense even the negatives spell good too.

I have been an Assistant Photographer for about eighteen months now. I believe I have done eight weddings. That is pretty good going, I think. I remember the first time when I was given one of the professional cameras and thinking "How on Earth do I use this?". I was set up for me, by the Photographer I work with. I was very quiet, just stood at the back of the church and I think my pictures were blurry as I didn't know how to focus, on this high tech Digital SLR. To be hones, I was still unsure how my SLR worked at this time and I had it for six months. I enjoyed the day though and there is a blog post back in May 2010 if you want to read more about it. I never imagined I would have the confidence to get involved and talk to guests about posing for the camera and getting me to take their photos. The social skills in Photography seemed unreachable.

Yesterday improved my social skills in Photography. Stuart could sense an improvement in my work; it has begun to be used in some of the wedding albums and he said my compositions and timings are much more precise so I had to move a step up. My task was to get in closer with the guests and interact with them. I am a Photographer now. It is what I should do. I can't just stand from a distance. I took up as much courage as I could to look for the golden opportunities and I found them. I got some wacky poses, some requests from parents to take pictures of their children running around (to be honest that one was hard, they really don't keep still, but I'll work on that) and I got a group of around ten people to smile at the camera for me. They were taking pictures of themselves using their amateur cameras, so I thought "Hey, I could take their pictures", which is what I asked and achieved. I felt so good about myself and even Stuart seemed impressed.

I'm loving this industry, this freedom of capturing light more than ever. I just fits with me!


Want to visit my Flickr photostream with the featured photos in my blog and more then click the following link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/brown_eyed_dreamer/