Firsts

This is about several firsts for me. This is the first post on my first photo blog; I have thought about doing this for several years and I finally just did it. This is the first blog I've written that isn't primarily about politics. And the picture below is the first picture that I ever sold.

This is not about selling my photographs. It's about growing as an artist; it's about talking with you - whoever and how many "you" turn out to be - about what goes into my photography. It's about the stories behind the pictures. It's about the journey.

I hope you'll come along on that journey. Tell me what you think about my pictures, about my stories; help me to learn to be a better photographer and a better artist.

Sunset Grazing

"Sunset Grazing" was taken with my first digital camera; a Fuji Finepix 6.0 MP with a 20 x zoom. I had owned an SLR in college for a few years but not since and decided to get my feet wet in digital with something not too expensive but that still took good pictures and would let me experiment with everything from full automatic to full manual modes. It lasted me for about four years until a couple of Christmases ago my wife surprised me with my first DSLR - and my current camera - a Canon Rebel XSi.

But back to the photo: I came upon this horse grazing in a field on one of our evening walks on an early November day in 2005. There was still some color in the trees and the sun was setting just behind a line of trees, making the light more golden than usual. That light limned the horses tail and mane and gave the whole scene a wonderful, warm glow. I walked back and forth a couple of times to get just the right mix of highlights, color in the trees and just a bit of sun flare and took about 4 shots.

For the final picture, I cropped from landscape to portrait, putting the horse near one of the rule of thirds intersections and then adjusted exposure, color and saturation in Photoshop Elements. This was shot in aperture priority at 1/160 sec, f 3.2, ISO 200.

While I was careful about setting up the shot, the important part of this story is that I came upon this beautiful scene and I had my camera with me. It's a lesson I continually have to relearn: take my camera with me no matter where I go and no matter how many times I've gone to that same place. And so there are still so many times the I've missed some really great pictures because I don't have my camera. My next post will be about the shot I missed because I didn't have my camera.