The Power of a Snapshots
Posted by latoga | Filed under Musings
Tonight, while working away in the home office, my wife came in looking for some of her art supplies. She ended up digging through a number of the boxes in the home office closet and came across a box full of snapshots of hers. The next 45 minutes was spent flipping through old photos, some only 5 years old while others were 30 years old or older.
This got me to thinking about what I point my camera at when I pull it out of the camera bag. There are remarkably few snapshots that I take. Is because of my more serious attitude toward photography, that the photos I take should be more than just snapshots? Yet, when I’m out photographing landscapes, cityscapes, or just doing a photowalk and I get into a flow, I’m just shooting without judging. Not sure of what I’ll do with the photograph. Isn’t that just what a snapshot is? (See Andrew Ilachinski’s post about Experiential Flow of Photography for a similar discussion) Or is it because I primarily shoot with my DSLR. This is a serious camera for serious photography, you don’t take snapshots with a that.
Either way, there is power in the snapshot. It reminds you of a time, a place, of friends or family. It is something that us serious photographers may grow out of at our own risk. The photos that we flipped through are more valuable in many ways than the last 1000 images of serious photography that I took. When I look back at the photos that I regret having lost or not haven taken the most a lot of them are simple snapshots. Like a large number of photos that I took during trips my wife and I took back when we were dating…all lost due to a hard drive crash. Priceless snapshots.
I have to make an effort to take more snapshots. Not that I’ll stop my serious photography or not want to upgrade to my more serious next DSLR. But we all should remembe the power of snapshots as part of our daily photographic lifes.
Tags: Family Pictures, Snapshots
Happy Thanksgiving
Posted by latoga | Filed under Photos, Wildlife
Updated 11/30/08: Someone pointed out to me that this looked like “a photo taken at a zoo”. Actually, this image is part of my backyard wildlife series, was taken from my patio and what you see in the background is the corner of our backyard. We have a (flock | pack | herd) of wild turkeys that roam our neighborhood. And they love the left overs from the bird feeders we have in our yard. On the day this particular photo was taken, there were about 12 turkeys in our yard with this particular Tom strutting his stuff for all to see. And for the record our Thanksgiving turkey came from Wholefoods…
Tags: Backyard Wildlife, Photos, Turkey
Photo: Front Door to the Port
Posted by latoga | Filed under Photos, Street
There is always something about the front entrance doors to the Port of San Francisco building on Pier 1. Every time I’m out photographing, I want to take a photo of this entrance. I think it has to do with the way the street lights and car lights passing on the Embarcadero play off the reflective lettering of the sign. The other thing about the entrance is that an image of it doesn’t carry as well when there is no people in the photo…
Photo: Biker Talk
Posted by latoga | Filed under Photos, Street
Fun with long exposures from last week’s photowalk in San Francisco. This photo was actually taken at the end of eventing commuter rush hour, the intersection was full of people…
Photo: Triangles and Stars
Posted by latoga | Filed under Abstracts, Architecture, Photos
Tags: Abstract, Architecture, Photos
