Photography
Through a hazy lens I remember how I started in
photography: pulling a Radio Flyer wagon through suburban streets,
looking for my prey: “little old ladies”. The advertisement in
the back of the comic book said that if I sold enough “All Occasion
Greeting Cards” I could win a kit which would allow me to develop
the film from my Kodak Hawkeye and make prints at home. The wagon
full of greeting card samples would come in handy when a “little
old lady” answered the door, as they were more likely to give me an
order than would men or younger women. It was a great bargain at $3.
The fact that they were probably 20 years younger than I am now
doesn't affect my memory of them or their designation. Surprisingly,
I sold enough and got the kit, using it for several years. The
beginning of a life-long enjoyment of photography. I still have the
pictures.
After getting married I wanted a “good” camera and
a friend who was a professional photographer steered me to a want ad
in the Washington Post. He checked out the camera with me and I
bought it: a Pentax Spotmatic with an f/1.4 lens. After giving the
seller a check for $100 I was urged to run for the car as the camera
was a steal at that price! It was a fine camera giving me
many good pictures. Until film died. Now the camera is a paper
weight.
Moving into the world of digital I joined a camera club
and learned the rules of good photography: thirds, leading lines,
curves, contrast, background and bokeh. Many people who know little
about photography are able to casually quote those rules to me though
I didn't know them before listening to lectures at the club.
The last one, bokeh, is the rule that the background,
and maybe the foreground, should be somewhat out of focus so that the
subject in between would stand out sharply. All of the rules can be
violated, of course, though bokeh only seems to be irrelevant when
you show an expansive mountain range of dangerous peaks, or a city at
night with multi-colored lights.
And that's where I get into trouble. I try to create
photos reflecting my garden's appearance to a viewer: some things
seen close, some in the middle distance and some far away. No bokeh.
I believe the plants should be viewed as part of a nice garden
landscape, and that is the way all humans see it. Everything near
and far is in focus to our eyes (due to the physics of a narrow pupil
creating a high f-stop number).
Photo contest judges want a single subject to look at,
not a lot of items in the picture. No prize for me.
 |
| Me. In the Garden. I'm smiling. |
When you can't exactly
remember how something, or someone, looked, the picture you took
becomes the “truth”. Years later that picture is
how your child looked, is
how the garden looked and is how you
looked (OMG!!)
And maybe some people, including those “little old
ladies”, will look at my pictures when posted on the net* by this
man, once small and pulling a wagon but now 20 years older than those
ladies were, and be happy that their $3 bought a lifetime of pleasure
in photography.
- - - - - - - -
* Who knows what the future net will do to links, but
you might be able to view my azalea garden as it appeared in 2015 by
going to:
