I am changing...

Over the past couple of shoots, I noticed that my "style" is drastically changing. I used to shoot with more DOF, generally around f/11, I used a lot of flash, and my images, although crisp, always tended to look a bit harsh. Lately, ever since I got the 70-200/4L (which is now a 70-300IS) I've stopped using flash and now shoot with a much larger aperture, generally between f/5.6 and f/8. These changes have given my images a much different look - a softer, truer feel to the images. Also, with inspiration from Tom Hick's "Macro Challenge" threads over at FM, I'm not so into the whole in-your-face closeups anymore and shoot from a distance, where I'm not worrying as much about magnification as I am composition. I sort of like this new shooting habit of mine, and I feel more like I'm capturing an unadulterated moment in time.

Here's what I'm talking about...

This is one of my older shots. It was one of my more popular shots, and everyone seemed to like it. It has a cool "dramatic" look to it, but there was something about it that kept it from being one of my favorite photos:

just my opinion here. i think it's all up the the individual to shoot what he likes. personally i like those shot especially the butterfly on the marigold. i'm new at photography in general and recently gotten the bug for macros. myself i shoot whatever get my interest. whether it close up or like your recent shot.

Bill

Bill Pham wrote in post #3688196
just my opinion here. i think it's all up the the individual to shoot what he likes. personally i like those shot especially the butterfly on the marigold. i'm new at photography in general and recently gotten the bug for macros. myself i shoot whatever get my interest. whether it close up or like your recent shot.

Bill

Well at first, you pretty much shoot everything you see, and that's encouraged...there's really nothing better than practice. But as you shoot more and more, you develop a certain style or look to your photos because you tend to use a similar setup for most of your shots, and you generally keep the ones that appeal to you. And yes, it is very much so up to the photographers themselves to decide how they want their shots to look; I bet there are a lot of people out there that prefer my older work to my newer work. But in the end, I just like to know that I've gone through the paces myself and have grown and evolved as a photographer.

Mrvile wrote in post #3688312
. But in the end, I just like to know that I've gone through the paces myself and have grown and evolved as a photographer.

well said.

by the way,your jumper looks great..your work is wicked man i love your style.new and old there both great..

I quite like your later shots! It's nice to have some context! Growth is always good to see in one self!

Steff

yeah just love the Jumping Spider #1 ,it's a bit soft in the eye's but the shot is great

Like them all. Just different styles which is good to see.

Brian V.

I think with digital you now have the perfect tool to explore every angle, style and setting you watt, back in the day things were a lot different when you had to pay for the creative stuff that was crap so you tended to not stray far from the norm if your budget was tight. We are so fortunate now to have the facility to explore. I am starting to find I am not thinking like I use to with film. Is this bad? I don't know... I do get my film cameras out now and again just to give my brain a train

Attic wrote in post #3691463
I think with digital you now have the perfect tool to explore every angle, style and setting you watt, back in the day things were a lot different when you had to pay for the creative stuff that was crap so you tended to not stray far from the norm if your budget was tight. We are so fortunate now to have the facility to explore. I am starting to find I am not thinking like I use to with film. Is this bad? I don't know... I do get my film cameras out now and again just to give my brain a train

Good point, and this leads to the question - just how beneficial is the digital medium? Now that we have virtually unlimited rolls of "film," we tend to just shoot, shoot, shoot. Because of this we tend to concentrate less and less on things like composition, because in those 100 frames we shot there's bound to be a good one.

Mrvile wrote in post #3691848
Good point, and this leads to the question - just how beneficial is the digital medium? Now that we have virtually unlimited rolls of "film," we tend to just shoot, shoot, shoot. Because of this we tend to concentrate less and less on things like composition, because in those 100 frames we shot there's bound to be a good one.

Add to this the facility to tweak crop and manipulate you shots in software opens up an even larger set of possibilities. Long gone the days of spending hours in a darkened bathroom with the old gnome enlarger trying to mask out part of a negative

Mrvile wrote in post #3691848
Good point, and this leads to the question - just how beneficial is the digital medium? Now that we have virtually unlimited rolls of "film," we tend to just shoot, shoot, shoot. Because of this we tend to concentrate less and less on things like composition, because in those 100 frames we shot there's bound to be a good one.

That's one way of looking at it. I personally admit to taking several digital shots where, with film, I would only take one or two, but I don't know if I'd agree, I'm being lazy. If your composition is poor on the first shot, it will be poor on the 10th.

I do find I take more shots of the same scene as insurance. With macro in particular, it is so easy to just miss the focus. Five more shots may just get you the perfect focus. (I wish... )

As to tweaking shots, yes this is readily available to all, but is it a bad thing? Saying this is wrong is, IMHO, like saying we should go back to the typewriter, where the odd mistake could be 'tippexed' out, but more often than not it meant throwing the paper away, and starting again. All we've done is removed the tweaking from the darkroom and brought it to the computer...

dreamline wrote in post #3692319
That's one way of looking at it. I personally admit to taking several digital shots where, with film, I would only take one or two, but I don't know if I'd agree, I'm being lazy. If your composition is poor on the first shot, it will be poor on the 10th.

I do find I take more shots of the same scene as insurance. With macro in particular, it is so easy to just miss the focus. Five more shots may just get you the perfect focus. (I wish... )

As to tweaking shots, yes this is readily available to all, but is it a bad thing? Saying this is wrong is, IMHO, like saying we should go back to the typewriter, where the odd mistake could be 'tippexed' out, but more often than not it meant throwing the paper away, and starting again. All we've done is removed the tweaking from the darkroom and brought it to the computer...

I for one readily embrace the digital photography medium, and definitely prefer it to film. Last year we took a camping trip to Utah with the school, and I used one of the school's old film SLR's because I didn't want to bring my own camera due to the dust. I found that with film, I took no more than two shots of the same scene, and when we got them developed, all of them looked great. Film tends to be a little more forgiving for a couple reasons...first, it has a higher dynamic range. But also, when we look at finished film, we look at it as a print and obviously prints are a LOT more forgiving than pixel peeping digital shots at 100%.

Anyway, while it was refreshing to get away from the whole digital thing for a little bit, I still find digital an easier and better medium in every aspect. The sheer amount of frames we can take, combined with the detail work we can do in the post-processing, is the only way that I can get the shots I do. And I'm not saying I have no sense of composition, but composition takes time to sink into, especially with insect macro, and I tend to take a couple shots from a few different angles until I find "that" shot. Also, I'm real big with the tweaking thing, too, and the clone stamp and patch tool are some of my best friends. The digital medium is perfect when you don't have total control of the shot, and with insect macro, this is all too true.