Keep Buying Lenses, and Eventually, You Will be Talented

I took the old (a week old) A6700 out in the yard again today, and I took some photos that I consider worth not deleting. I also got some wonderful shots of my son in the house, but I won’t be uploading them here. It seems like all my really good photos are of things I don’t share.

The other day, as I have written before, I took a shot staring up into a live oak, and all I expected to get out of it was some experience running the camera, but when I edited it, I liked it. Now that I have seen that the tree has potential, I am determined to try to get some quality shots out of it. I took a few snaps, and I created a better photo than the first one, although it is still not going to win prizes. Here it is:

While I was doing this, I saw that I was able to bring out colors on the shady side of the tree, and I found a nice area of the tree that would fill a frame and make for a better composition. I cropped that area and exported it as a JPG in order get an idea what the new shot would look like.

Because the crop is pretty harsh, the photo is extremely fuzzy. I think I should take the A7IV out with a bigger lens and see how much detail I can get.

I have to do what I can before the red leaves fall off the other tree in the pictures, because those red leaves are important to the images.

I also took some more cow photos, and they were as bad as the old ones. I used the proper ISO and so on, but there is no way to get cow photos in the shade at full zoom without getting a ton of grain. At least I think there isn’t.

I made a valiant effort to find things out there to shoot. I keep telling myself a good photographer can find subjects anywhere, so I don’t want to give up. On the other hand, I am not a good photographer yet, so how much can I expect at this stage?

I found some colorful leaves to shoot, and from that, I learned that you never shoot a leaf with the light behind you. The glare on the leaf will kill the whole project.

I took a shot of a peach blossom, just to see what would happen. The idea was to fake macro by zooming in. The photos are very pretty, but you wouldn’t want to blow them up. The grain is too much.

These are like shots from a low-budget version of James Cameron’s Pandora.

It’s a shame I can’t post shots of my son, because they are on another level. He makes it easy. He is as good a model as any professional in New York or Paris. His skin is perfect. He is relentlessly cute. He comes up with all sorts of poses. I don’t know what I’m going to do with all the top-notch photos I’m taking.

I got a Viltrox 27 mm f/1.2 lens for the A6700, and when people say it’s amazing, they are not lying. It seems like every image is beautiful. I shoot my son during breakfast every day, and the Viltrox is now my official breakfast lens.

Viltrox is Chinese, and it is shaming Sony and Canon and the rest by making exquisite lenses at Chinese prices. I figure I should snap some up before the inevitable price increase that will follow mass recognition.

I am sorely tempted to get a Viltrox 75 mm f/1.2 as well, for outdoor shots of my family.

I took a lot of atrocious photos today, but the ratio of atrocities to usable shots is shrinking, and I am fully able to work Photolab, so now I am finally able to edit with some degree of competence. I also got a new TV and calibrated it for editing, so if my photos look weird on your screen, it’s your fault, not mine.

I am considering driving downtown from time to time and doing some street photography. I can only take so many photos of bewildered cattle. When summer returns, which I dread, there will be more bugs and flowers and so on to shoot right here.

It would be wonderful to have a big zoom for birds and animals. The Sony 200-600 mm would be a joy to have. I don’t know how often I would use it, though.

Things are going well, and I see no reason why they shouldn’t continue to do so.

Photographs are neat because they don’t necessarily show what subjects look like, but they do show how you feel about them. If you love what you’re shooting, other people will see that you love it. Of course, if you feel hatred or contempt, they will also see that, but let’s dwell on the positive here.

I have a Flickr account now, so I’ll be using that to post big photos here. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to overcome WordPress’s upload preferences well enough to post them to my own server. I’ll keep fiddling with it.