I came into lynda.com training just to pass the time, with some small hope of a better understanding of digital processes. I wasn't expecting much of anything, and most certainly wasn't expecting to be inspired by what I found online. I was sure the most effective courses, if there were any, would be about the technical aspects of digital equipment or the digital manipulation of images.
But what I found was a mind full of preconceived ideas – ideas of what digital was and of how inferior it had to be to what I once loved. Photography for me was chemistry and film, taking up long hours in a darkroom processing light sensitive paper to get the images I sought. I could not conceive of a photographic image made outside of these parameters... of these constraints. I had to let go of my negative conceptions of the digital world, but I had spent so much time thinking photography was dead, that it had changed so much, that it just wasn't "real" photography anymore. This must have been how the first daguerreotypists felt as their techniques were being replaced by glass plate negatives... damn I'm old. But once I let go and just went with the flow, I found myself becoming interested, then intrigued, and then inspired by what I saw and what I was learning. The funny thing is, what was inspiring me most weren't the technical aspects at all. Now don't get me wrong... these lessons were invaluable. I saw what was possible digitally and I learned all about the new technology available to the modern photographer. My new camera, the Fujifilm X-T1 had f/stops on the lens and a shutter speed dial just like my old film cameras did. Adobe Lightroom manipulated a digital image much like filters and darkrooms allowed me to do long ago. But these lessons were the things you had to know to manipulate images in a digital world. They weren't photography per se. They were the tools used with photography, the stuff you needed to make images. What really inspired me was something far more fundamental and far more essential. It was the courses on the photographic experience, those photographic concepts I already knew about, but which had gone by the wayside after so many years without, that truly made me reevaluate, made me think, made me excited to see photography as I once did when I first started. The simple acknowledgement of what photography is, its composition, its view of the world, its most basic qualities, made me realize what I had lost and what I could gain again. Getting back to basics, to the core of what something is – this is what inspires us most. All the technical advances, all the tools and flashy equipment... these are just window dressing, a way to get us interested. But in the end, without the understanding of why we do what we do, it's just that... window dressing, with no real substance.
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You've heard people use the idiom "I've seen the light!", and usually they mean something like "I finally understand", or, "I see it clearly now". But what does that have to do with photography? Well, pretty much everything.
After many years learning and using film photography as my medium, everything changed to digital, and I pretty much got out of taking photos for money or for myself. Oh, I had the mandatory PHD camera (press here dummy!), surviving on vacation snaps, for what they were worth, but stopped working on my personal image making altogether. Times had changed, I had moved on (or so I thought), and life progressed as it does. Recently I have found myself with some time on my hands and with access to lynda.com training, which is a wondrous combination for someone in my situation. Searching for interesting topics, I found a series on the "Foundations of Photography", and thought it might be good for refreshed look on how to explain basic photo concepts, or at least good for a laugh. After just a few minutes I realized how much more it was. I began about my photo work, what I wasn't doing with it, and wondering why I had stopped in the first place. Digital imaging has progressed so much over the last few decades as to be unrecognizable to that monstrous thing that replaced my precious film and chemistry so long ago. The advent of Lightroom and its powerful tools for manipulating a photographic image (so much like the old darkroom days), the technology that has far surpassed its primitive beginnings (remember $1000 two megapixel cameras?), and the joy of seeing new digital cameras based on old designs (with actual shutter speed dials on the body and apertures on the lenses!) have made this curmudgeon want to start photography all over again with fresh eyes and new inspirations. So I have now voraciously sucked up a couple of dozen lynda.com courses, from the very basics of composition and digital equipment use to understanding the intricacies of Lightroom and Photoshop. Each and every one of these videos has had something to say, some kind of insight or new perspective to teach. The most amazing thing about all of this? What I thought was going to happen... didn't. |
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