I long ago gave up hope of becoming even a goodish amateur photographer, but thinking a bit about pictures recently inspired me to at least think about it again
Ben Gurr in the Times gave some top tips. #1: You should not need to think about the technical side of things. Be totally familiar with your equipment
I tried very hard years ago to get to grips with f numbers & lenses … tried different ways of getting into my head how these connected with what the eye could see. No luck, but then came good automatic cameras. Still no real improvement. I just could never get to work out the relationship between what I could see & how it would look on a few square inches of paper
Maybe Saturday was time for another go while I waited for the bus. No camera, just concentrate on looking at the scene & trying to imagine what kind of a photo I would try to produce
Start with the sky. Visually great, not so good for the weather on a June day. Some angry cumulus, very white & dense but somehow plumped up & very fluffy, like cotton wool released from the plastic packaging but not yet pulled apart
Quite low, but leaving room for dirtier claggy stuff to come scudding in underneath. Borne on amazingly variable & gusty winds. The odd patch of blue
So how would I set about a picture? Presumably, technically, it would make a difference if I wanted to emphasise the texture of the cotton wool stuff, or capture the sense of movement underneath
Concentrate on the hill. Amazing contrasts of greens, especially between the fields & the odd standing copse or lone tree, then the texture of the larger wood lower down. Go for colour or texture – or could you have both?
Or go for the geometry? The line at the top of the hill, crowned by the mast. The odd geometry of the stone walls marking out the fields – just dark lines from here. Come to think of it, why is the geometry like that, mixing triangles& quadrilaterals? Why are they not just neat rectangles?
Just then there was a bit of a break in the clouds, changing everything as a shaft of sunshine moved across. Start again!
But I think I have learned one thing. If I learn not to be greedy & just concentrate on one aspect at a time, maybe then I could get to grips with the technicalities
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