Mastering the art of the rinky-tink-tink: part one

 

So, what is it that you do to your shots?  The sisters have asked. They’re kinda unique.

Well, I ahh… I umm… see, I move the clicker wheel to ‘BEACH SCENE’, and then I hold the button down halfway so it may (or may not) focus, and then…

Crap, I think, too late, rinky-tink-tinking on my toy piano in a roomful of Steinways. I’ve just outed myself. Next thing you know I’ll give away my ‘BRIGHT SNOW DAY’ trick.

My camera is a glorified point-and-shoot with an unchangeable junior lens, shot-in-the-dark focusing and a complete inability to operate properly in anything but blazing outdoor light. It's all I know, photographically — probably like many of you, too — aside from the 25-year-old Pentax K-1000 I learned on.

So to those who have yet to graduate to the school of digital SLR I say:

1) You are not alone in your periodic camera-directed sado-masochistic abandonment fetish.

2) Between now and the receipt of lotto winnings, we may as well make the best of it.

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It’s frustrating to hit a ceiling — to have a creative drive that exceeds your equipment. I’ve got a baby, a toddler, a recent home renovation and a credit line with indigestion. Canon? Nikon? NTFL (add ‘Not Too F-ing Likely’ to your web-repertoire alongside LOL, SAHM and OMG).

Stretch what you’ve got. If you’ve still got the manual, read it (or go online to find it). Uncover every possible setting, adjustment and feature. Capture the same scene on auto, on preset modes, with flash, without flash, zoomed in, zoomed out. Let no button or switch go unexplored. If your camera offers manual settings, test them vigorously until you can visualize the effects of shutter speed, aperture and ISO.

Learn what works best in your most common shooting scenarios. For instance, when it’s bright out I use the ‘beach scene’ preset mode to overexpose, then tone down within Photoshop after I’ve downloaded the images. Something about that setting, combined with a contrast adjustment after-the-fact, makes blue skies pop.

Such a trick I’d never have learned if I hadn’t moved the clicker off the godforsaken AUTO and taken some risks in the interest of trial by error.

Sure, I flail, and curse, and salivate in front of store windows. Then I turn to my weary, battered Kodak, my pipsqueak, and say Okay kid, it’s just you and me. Let’s see what we can do.

To stalk souls like rare birds

In yoga, at the very beginning, you get centred. You stand still, hands at your sides. A soft voice reminds you to be attuned to your feet pressing onto smooth wood, to gravity, to breathing in and breathing out. This is awareness, that wholesome kind of physical hum that comes from time well spent.

This is the stuff that keeps you young, sane and grateful no matter what maelstrom surrounds you.

Photography generates the same hum, don't you find?

With a camera in hand you walk softly. A camera demands consciousness, asks that you quiet yourself to note the light, beauty, pain, sorrow or joy in front of your lens in that moment.

For the record, count me among the pointers and shooters. The equipmentally challenged, the chronic cheapskates (by choice or by circumstance) who still want — regardless of technical proficiency — to take not just snapshots but interesting photographs that evoke feeling and memory and scent and wistfulness and hopes and dreams and all the rest.

There it is, how I love him, right there. The curve of his cheek, that smear of peanut butter. The way he looks at the sky, skeptical, when the clouds are fat with grey and weather. His boots, crunching on fresh snow. His hair, scruffing out from under the brim of his hat.

In yoga, at the very end, you return to the centre, lying still. A soft voice reminds you to be attuned to the effort you've made. And not to reflect on the perfection of movement, but on the trying of it.