I used to have a photography business. It became sucessful, everyone praised my photos and I made some money and some new friends. I stopped doing it after a couple of years so that I could go back to work full-time. And I've always wanted to go back to it. But every time that I have contemplated it, I realize more and more how lazy my photos are. I rely exclusively on natural light and that pretty much forced me to shoot outside almost all of the time when I was shooting for clients. And I knew enough to get some good shots almost all of the time, but I didn't know enough to get GREAT shots much of the time. I made clients happy with shots like these:
They're okay shots. But not great by any means. And I was never happy with the outcome. I definitely got better with time but I knew that it was partially luck that my shoots were going well. Weather conditions could still fluster me and I didn't know my camera well enough. I was very lucky that I didn't ruin more shoots than I did (two were nightmares and I had to do re-shoot them).
This past week, when I was in Vegas, I was stuck in a lot of low-light inside situations and I froze. I got some decent ones, some terrible ones, and some so-so ones. But, the panic I felt has stuck with me all week long.
So, I'm going back to the basics and then I'm going to push myself to use manual all the time on my camera. I'm going to be auditing Karen Russell's photography class this winter/spring and I am so excited! Before Karen's class starts, though, I'm also going to be re-reading and re-reading Katrina Kennedy's ebooks and tutorials at DesignerDigitals. Katrina is a master and I can't wait to dive back into her tutorials.
