Don’t look back in anger..

by nadiphotography

Learning curve

When I’m bored or have nothing else to work on, I don’t go outside to enjoy the summer and play beach volley with my huge entourage.  I sit on my ass and study.

The most painful and effective way to learn new things about yourself and about photography is to go back to look at your previous work.

No matter how much I shoot, no matter how  frequently, and I do photograph a lot these days, I still cringe when I go through my old work.

WTF?

Its fun to take out an old RAW file and check out the settings. Most of the time its like WTF!? What was I thinking and above all WHY did i use such lense to work with. I’ve fucked up so many photos by choosing a zoom lens to work with. But if you dont know better what can you do?

This is a good example on such case..

Well underexposed, shot with  pieceofshit 18-105mm Nikon lense. Shot beside a window, no reflector. I left the editing quite raw in this one.

Settings

Shot, 10.10.2010

Nikon D90

18-105mm

f/5.3  1/60 ISO 400

Focal length  80mm!!

This lens does have its place and is useful for me in some situations, but for portrait photography… wtf.

Asshole!

N guess what? I remember, I had my trusty Nikkor 1:2  50mm   just next to me.

So what would I do differently now?

Use the fuckin 50mm of course. At f/2.8 it would blow out the  wall paper at least a bit.  It would give more light in of course and give me a better starting point to edit this frame.

And it would again leave its own distinctive look to the frame also. I love that lense.

So, in a nutshell.  Dare to go back, vomit and learn.