Happy Friday. I hope you are enjoying the great weather we’re having this week and it looks to continue into next week as well.
Tuesday Jeanne and I went to the 16th Street detention basin. This was the slowest activity at the basin I’ve seen this year. Ring Billed Gulls were about the only wildlife around with the exception of a half-dozen geese.
It wasn’t a great time of day to be shooting but I decided to practice trying to capture birds in flight. The Sigma 50 – 500 mm lens is 8 pounds heavy and fully racked out it’s long as well. Additionally it is slow to focus and sometimes as I have reported earlier it won’t focus at all. So it’s a real challenge trying to capture a small gull in flight.
Anyway this series of images captures a gull fishing at the basin. I was trying to capture him when he shot straight up, rolled over and dove straight down (first shot) and then reappeared, got airborne, and flew off to continue the process.
I just finished watching an hour-long presentation by Scott Kelby critiquing images from other photographers. He would point out what makes an image suck, what makes one good and what makes one WOW!
After looking at 30 or more images and listening to what was wrong with each I then went though some of my library. Damn I’m depressed. So many times in photography as in many aspects of life itself one doesn’t know what one doesn’t know.
The only way I can look at it though, (since I’ve got too much invested in equipment to quit) is that I have much room for improvement. Additionally I learned somethings today that I continuously do wrong. I knew I wasn’t happy with the results but I didn’t really understand what I was doing wrong. So I won’t make those mistakes again.
It is a journey not a destination. Enjoy the great weather and your Friday. Make it a great day. Thanks for stopping by and be careful.
Upde Designs 
Take Scott with a grain of salt. His stuff is geared toward the professional looking to SELL images. There are lots of great pictures taken every day that may not be marketable but still enjoyable to look at. Also, while many see him as a guru, it is still one person’s opinion (I have talked with Scott and I am pretty sure my knowledge of the principals and elements of style is much stronger than his. Those are the standards all art is judged against).
You have posted many images that do have that WOW factor, enough to make someone like me follow your blog. Even Ansel thought it took hundreds of pictures to come up with one ‘keeper’.
It is good to be self critical, it is what pushes us, motivates us, gets us doing stuff we normally would not do. But not to the level of self-destructiveness.
I know for a fact you have one big fan of your work (me). I am sure there are others.
Keep clicking!
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Dave, you are way too hard on yourself. Since I am not a camera guru, I just enjoy looking at photographs….and how photographers find new things or different angles to shoot from. Of the pictures today, i really lked the last one the best, because the reflectioins on the water distracted from the other bird images….but that is just me, and I am an “unskilled” critic. Enjoy all of the photos all the same and hope you continue.
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