A travel, photography & nerd blog

This is a totally personal – almost non-technical post. Skip it if you don’t care.

During New Year I was thinking back to my first contact with photography, my current photography and what I’d like to improve in 2010.Sadly the post got a bit too gear related and I don’t have any chance to show you some of my old pictures, but I hope you get my intention.

Past

I’ve been told that I had my first contact with a camera when I was 4yo: I played with my dad’s Canon EOS 650.

About a year later (I think when I became 5yo) I got my first own camera: A Fisherprice “toy” camera that took 110 pocket film. When I look at the prints of that camera today: they just suck. Quality and composition wise. But my mom always told me how much fun I had with that thing. Well… I think it just looked funny to see a boy looking through a blue camera with two “viewfinders”, but hey! It’s important to have fun, especially as a child

Another two years later I got an APS-C Camera with a 35/50mm “zoom” built-in. The image quality of these pictures is better and my composition also got better (at least I persuade that to myself). I already took pictures of animals in the zoo and my family. I think I lost that camera when I was 9yo and didn’t have a replacement for years…

Not having a photo camera doesn’t mean I didn’t take pictures. Well no still pictures, but videos. I had a Sony analog 8mm video camera and annoyed my family by filming everything from holidays to motorsport and family events …

Then came digital. I got a used Fujifilm Finepix 4700 Zoom in 2004. That beast has 2.4Mpixels and a 36-108mm (35mm equiv) lens. The “good” thing about that camera is that it uses SmartMedia cards with just 64Mb of space for 30 images. Also the display sucked so much power that I couldn’t really turn it on to check the results and had to think before pressing the shutter just as with analog. I mostly shot landscapes with that camera (You can see some of the pictures in my blog post about my Trip to Tenerife) and I think I fell in love with photography with that camera.

I used the Fuji for 3 years, but then wanted something better because the low-light performance was actually non-existent – even at the lowest ISO setting the camera showed visible noise so I bought a Canon Powershot A590 in mid-2008 and started playing around in manual mode… figured with  aperture, shutter speed, ISO and so on… but didn’t take many (good) pictures with the A590.

Current

Then, in the early 2009‘s, I bought a DSLR – a Nikon D90 and a Nikon 50mm f/1.8. The high ISO performance plus that f/1.8 just rock. But on the D90′s crop sensor the 50mm are too long for what I liked to shoot… so I also got a Tamron 17-50 f/2.8. In June 2009 I also bought a Nikon 70-300 VR, a Hoya HD circular polarizer and a Nikon MB-D10 for my Trip to Egypt and just one month later a Joby Gorllapod SLR for long-exposure shots at night on the London & South East England trip. By the end of the year I also had a Nikon SB-600 and a Lumiquest SoftBox III… Let’s just say with the buying of that DSLR I became kind of a gear guy.

I learned a lot about the technique by simply trying, but also by reading blogs of famous photographers like Joe McNally, Moose Peterson, Scott Kelby, Chris Marquardt, David Hobby’s Strobist and even Ken Rockwell. Another good thing was to follow them on Twitter and listen to podcasts like HappyShooting, Daily Photo Tips With Chris, DTownTV …

With the buying of the Canon Powershot A590 I started shooting many many frames, and my folder based organization soon started to show it’s weak points. I downloaded the Lightroom 2 Beta and directly bought the full version as soon as it was available and never wanted anything else. Lightroom just fits my workflow perfectly because I’m not a Photoshop guy… I only crop, adjust color, exposure, denoise and sharpen.

Future Goals

Having said that much about the gear I used, let’s get back to photography: I’d say I’m a landscape photographer and I also love to shoot at night… especially cityscapes. I mostly shoot when travelling, but that’s more because my surrounding is rather boring.
My resolution for 2010 is to get creative with lighting and improve my composition. I think still-lifes are a good way to do so. The next things I want to do are portraits, wildlife and maybe street photography. And I want to become more active on the Social Networks to get a bigger audience of viewers.

Gear wise (Note to myself: It’s not the gear. It’s you that takes the pictures… blah ) I plan to buy a wide-angle zoom or a macro for my D90 and a lightweight tripod. Maybe also a Nikon equiv. to the Canon PowerShot G11, because I’ve had so many moments where I missed a possibly good shot just because I didn’t want to carry my DSLR.

Trip wise I am planning my next real photo trip: A 3-week USA Road trip through Nevada, California, Arizona and Utah or a Safari through Namibia or Kenya depending on my budget.

Conclusion

One thing that really helps me is to set goals. My goals really come down to learning to light, improve composition and maybe shoot more frequently. Projects like Flickr’s 365 or Boris Nienke’s Area52 are some really interesting ideas to force you to shoot more often…

You can see my favorite shots on my Flickr stream: Favs, Night, Landscape