Always Room For Improvement-- How can I make this Better?

[Hornet3d]

I meant to add ... the blurred background is perfect in this photo.

It does work well and often does in wildlife photography but even if it didn't there is little you can do about it with a telephoto lens. Another area where you have more control in 3D art where you can set the DOF exactly where you want it without paying a penalty for the exposure required.

 

[Rowan54]

when I started photography if you wanted to do anything close to postwork you had to shut yourself away in an almost dark room with trays of evil smelling chemicals.

My father did "postwork" sometimes in the darkroom. Though I think he was doing photography as much for the chance to play with "evil-smelling chemicals" as the pictures themselves. (He really liked chemistry for some reason.)
However, I'm sensitive to all chemicals (probably because of his inadequately ventilated darkroom that I spent more time in than I wanted to) and was overjoyed to get my first digital camera and be able to skip all of the chemical stuff entirely. (As well as not having to pay for film processing which I'd gone to after giving up on playing with chemicals.)
I started with a Kodak camera for two reasons. I'd started taking film photos on a Kodak camera (at age 14) and knew them as good starter cameras, and it was in my price range (the biggest concern). Frankly, that first digital camera cost about the same as getting an envelope full of rolls of film processed and I took about 10 thousand photos with it. (See my photos freebies--especially the "woods" series and the "road" series, and the two photo packages for sale at Rendo if you want to see the quality of photos it took.) Unfortunately, the screen had an accident, or I'd still be using it.
I now have a couple of Canons, and a Sony. (Two of them 2nd hand.)

 

[Hornet3d]

I started with a Kodak box camera, I think it was called a Brownie and I was about 12 years old. In my teens I wanted a 'real' camera but money was tight but on Christmas my parented presented me with a Russian made camera called a Zenith. Later, when I was earning my own money I started building a kit based around a Nikon body and a series of lenses.

 

[Rowan54]

Mine was an Instamatic, which took 126 film. Square pictures, but otherwise very good quality. Xmas present. My father didn't bother to spend on many things other people consider necessities, but he did spend on camera equipment. Including that camera which at that time was top-of-the-line point-and-shoot. (He'd already figured out that I wasn't going to learn all the f-stops and other tech things on the manual film cameras.)
I did get a Minola SLR for Xmas when I was in my 20s or thereabout, and it was partially electronic which meant it'd set all the technical stuff itself.
That was it until many years later when I got the digital camera. (I never could afford expensive stuff on what I was able to earn at jobs.)

 

[HaiGan]

To think when I started photography if you wanted to do anything close to postwork you had to shut yourself away in an almost dark room with trays of evil smelling chemicals. These days you can do amazing post work from the comfort of your own room in full daylight.

It was quite fun paddling around in a dark room, though, and inventing new ways of filtering/masking/combining/altering the images. (Where's the emoji for nostalgia?)

 

[Janet]

I read a story about the pollution in a river, the Susquehanna I think that was caused from a film making company being right on its edge as a child. One of those Weekly Reader things in school. I always wanted to do photography but always remembered the pollution it caused. It wasn't until digital cameras came out that I got one.

 

[Hornet3d]

I read a story about the pollution in a river, the Susquehanna I think that was caused from a film making company being right on its edge as a child. One of those Weekly Reader things in school. I always wanted to do photography but always remembered the pollution it caused. It wasn't until digital cameras came out that I got one.

A sad fact but then there was so much then that was so dangerous to human life but as it was only twenty years or so after a world war maybe people had a different outlook. Certainly things like lead in petrol and asbestos were not only killing people then they still are today, mind you the face that such things were deadly was not common knowledge at the time. Those that knew kept very quiet about it.

 

[Rowan54]

For example, some of the chemical fertilizers were actually left over war chemicals (gas? bomb? I was never clear on what), and they got rid of it by advertising it as fertilizer and everyone was spreading it on their gardens. I suppose it added more nutrients than nothing.
However, I go for making my own compost. Though I don't turn down chicken/horse/cow poo when I can get it.

 

[Rowan54]

There's also that all the technology and chemicals were very new and everyone was excited about all the new things figuring they all had to be safe, because they were man made. Probably not even the people who had a clue that they were poisonous had a clue HOW poisonous and to how many things. The stuff hadn't been in the environment long enough to acquire enough data to really get an idea what was going to happen.

 

[JOdel]

I posted an anecdotal accounting of my first encounter with the Film vs Digital debate. It's over on my site in the Graphics collection: Student work.
Red Hen Publications — Publications:

I took that class in the spring of 2000, so we're talking quite a while ago.

I'd been involved in hobby photography since midway through High School, but had reached a point that I was not improving at all, in any direction, and finally decided that I'd leave it to someone else to take the bloody pictures. Mine just flatly weren't up to speed.

 

[Rowan54]

Photos are for more artistic uses than being artwork themselves. They are also for taking pictures of interesting textures that can be used to texture a model, backgrounds to use behind figures, or as references for making models. Just to name three of the more obvious uses.

On a non-art front, I also take pictures as "notes" from books (instead of spending hours and hours and reams of paper writing stuff down), or to document something that happened so there'd be no question exactly how something looked at a specific point in time, or to take pictures of friends/relatives/pets for memory books. (No one cares if the picture is artwork, or even halfway good, if you have the only picture of grandma that there is.)

With the digital, I can also take a picture to look somewhere that I cannot see, and then look at it to see what's there. (Is the dead mouse under the bed? No, keep looking for it. Is there a skunk under the workbench? No, whew, it moved on. Did the hen lay eggs under the hen house again? Only one, and I'm not kneeling down in the mud to get it. Is the cat hiding behind the towels? Aha, there she is.)

As for Spring of 2000 being quite a while ago.....I got my first camera in the 1960s.

 

[Hornet3d]

As for Spring of 2000 being quite a while ago.....I got my first camera in the 1960s.

Same here the Kodak Brownie must have been in mid to late 1960s and the first SLR sometime in the 1970. If anyone had told me then that instead of a roll of 35mm film having 24 or 36 exposures that, 30 years later, I would be able to store literally thousands of pictures on something no bigger than a postage stamp I would thought they were totally crazy.

 

[Rowan54]

If anyone had told me then that instead of a roll of 35mm film having 24 or 36 exposures that, 30 years later, I would be able to store literally thousands of pictures on something no bigger than a postage stamp I would thought they were totally crazy.

I was reading SF, so I wouldn't have thought they were crazy, but I would have certainly wanted to see one before fully believing that such a thing could exist outside the imagination.

Though, come to think of it, the SF stories I was reading all assumed that we'd still be using film cameras when people lived on the moon/Mars/elsewhere. Shows what they didn't know!

 

[Hornet3d]

I was reading SF, so I wouldn't have thought they were crazy, but I would have certainly wanted to see one before fully believing that such a thing could exist outside the imagination.

Though, come to think of it, the SF stories I was reading all assumed that we'd still be using film cameras when people lived on the moon/Mars/elsewhere. Shows what they didn't know!

That is the problem with those that predict the future, you only know how good they are when the future has arrived.

I am still blown away by technology though, I was recently given a set of lightweight headphones for when you are active (so they won't get used much ). They are in the ear bud type but with over the ear clip to help hold them in place, what amazes me is despite the size they are bluetooth have a volume switch and batteries along with the required USB charging port and status led but the size is about quarter the size of a boxes of matches if not smaller. I know this is nothing special these days but for someone of a 1950s vintage I gave to say I am amazed.

Mind you I was always in awe of the humble vacuum flask, not that keeping hot things hot or cold things cold is that clever, but knowing the difference, now that is something.

 

[Rowan54]

Mind you I was always in awe of the humble vacuum flask, not that keeping hot things hot or cold things cold is that clever, but knowing the difference, now that is something.

It doesn't know the difference between hot and cold. What it does is insulate in such a way that the heat/lack of heat doesn't travel through it, in either direction, at least, not quickly. I have studied some science, and how things work, and how things are made, but not in any great detail. Like don't ask me HOW it does it. I just remember having seen the explanation somewhere and know it's a form of insulation. Something clever, and arcane, and I don't know how anyone actually came up with that.