Every Snap of the Shutter

As someone who grew up without a lot of financial resources, I could never afford to buy a camera. So, when my more financially secure friends would show off their flashy devices, I was always a little jealous and envious. Up until I got an iPhone in 2009, I was relegated to cheapie disposable cameras that would only handle one roll of film. You know the kind: 27 photos with no depth of field and a teeny-tiny viewfinder. It was pretty pathetic.
 
The iPhone changed all of that for me. When I bought my first Apple smartphone almost a decade and a half ago, I suddenly had an unlimited number of photographs with a variety of editing tools at my disposal. No more one-time-use camera for me! Suddenly, I could take pictures of anything anywhere at any time. After a lifetime without anything vaguely resembling a real camera, this was a revelation. Over the ensuing years, I took thousands of photos: my family, pets, concerts, vacations, collectibles... I thoroughly enjoyed photographing my ​​mild-mannered life for posterity's sake.
 
When social media hit big (first with Friendster, then MySpace, then Facebook), I suddenly had an audience - albeit a small one - for my photography adventures. I held out on joining Facebook until 2010, and I didn't take the plunge into Instagram until late 2011. For the first few years, I pretty much ignored my Instagram account, only posting pictures intermittently for photo contests and a handful of memorable moments. In 2015, however, after I taught a few AP English lessons on photography, visual rhetoric, and tone, I started posting more actively and consistently on Instagram. In the last seven years, I've gone from 14 posts to almost 700 on my personal account (@farfromkansas); I also opened up a few other Instagram accounts for my various creative and professional projects (@buenalibrary, @notsosilentlibrarian, and @briarroseramblers, etc.). During that time, I began to experiment more with filters, camera angles, portrait mode, depth of field, and a variety of other simple techniques.
 
About half a year ago, I finally took the plunge and bought a REAL camera: a Sony Alpha a7R IV Mirrorless Digital Camera w/Sony FE 24-70mm f/2.8 GM Lens. It cost a pretty penny (significantly more than anything else I've purchased in my entire life), but I was lucky enough to receive some inheritance money after my father passed away. Basically, it was a "feel better about your dead dad" vanity purchase. That being said, I have a feeling that Pops would have appreciated this use of his money. 

Since early 2022, I've been learning a lot - and I mean A LOT - about photography. Luckily for me, I had a few built-in advisors: Emmet Cullen, Amanda Graves, Eddie Raburn, and a few other friends/acquaintances. Using their guidance and expertise, I purchased a "forever" camera that should last me a lifetime.
 
So, what have I learned this year, as I've started using a real camera? Here are a few tips:

• Take lots of photos. As with any other talent, skill, or hobby, the learning curve is steep. You're going to suck at photography for a long time before you start to get the hang of it. Be okay with mediocrity, but give yourself some grace. You will get better as you take more photos. If you use Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours as your metric for artistic mastery, then you better start cracking right away - and stick with it for the foreseeable future.
• Frame your shot. Especially when shooting portraits, make sure that you have the proper headspace above your subject and enough room to include all the important details. With larger, higher-resolution files, it's much easier to zoom in and crop than to have a chunk of your intended picture missing entirely.
• Depth of field. I'm still learning about this (the "rule of thirds" is a crazy matrix for my little English teacher brain), but aperture can sometimes make or break a photo. Because "portrait mode" on the iPhone helped me dip my toes into these ambiguous waters, I developed a soft spot for blurry, out-of-focus backgrounds. That being said, I'm still struggling with how to get the focus "just right" without light overexposure.
• Shutter speed. When trying to shoot my daughters' sporting events, I discovered that the images ended up blurry unless I changed the ​shutter speed. Mr. Cullen gave me some suggestions about ISO, and I had some luck with 1/3200. Even at a cross-country meet with constant rapid movement, I was able to capture some remarkable mid-stride images.
• Post-production editing. Find yourself a good editing app for your pictures. If you want an easy starting point, consider downloading Snapseed or a similar software platform. My go-to editing app is Hipstamatic, which provides a wide variety of filters, frames, and other tools (with potential in-app purchases for even more flexibility). Because I've been using Hipstamatic longer than I've been using Instagram, I feel most comfortable with that platform; however, there are probably much more professional programs that you can use (Lightroom, etc.). Don't underestimate the power of Photoshop!

​As with anything else, I'm still learning. Albert Einstein once stated that "The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know." Likewise, using the logic of syllogism (like the transitive property in math): the more that you know, the more you realize you have a lot to learn... and I have a LOT to learn. In the meanwhile, though, I'm going to enjoy every snap of my shutter.