Withstanding the Assault of Sustained Thinking...

Voltaire said, “No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.”

Voltaire obviously wasn’t thinking of digital photography…or any type of photography… when he said that.  Because when you are taking a long time trying to figure out your best aperture and shutter speed on a camera, the eagle has most likely flown away, the magic hour is probably over or your kid has stopped being cute and has gone off to play video games.  That’s why it is so easy to fall back on automatic settings on a digital camera and to turn the thought process off.

But knowing the basics is a really good thing, so I have started attending a Basic Digital Photography class to get back to those basics.  Heck, I used to know about aperture openings and shutter speeds back in the day when I had my old Olympus OM10 but as the years have passed and my cameras have gotten more and more sophisticated and automatic, my mind has not been exercised and my memory has failed.  Most of that information has gone the way of my high school French… dans la couche d'ozone.  Bits and pieces have stuck but much of it is gone.

This past week, I have had my camera set on manual and I have not fallen back on the automatic setting.  Whether or not I will continue in this primitive world, I can’t say.  I do know that if I do, many sins can be forgiven through digital processing.  But I think I will post some of the shots I took on manual this week.  No, they are not SOOC (straight out of camera).  I did have to mess with them a little bit.  I can’t quite help that.  After all, even when we shot with film, the photos needed to be processed…