gearhead

I am the first one to admit that I am not a gear head. Yes, I thoroughly enjoy drooling over eye candy and the idea of new coveted lenses as much as anyone else. But can I make a small confession? Gear overwhelms me. So does looking up the steep mountain of a learning curve with a new camera body and a manual nearly an inch thick.

Many of you know I recently experienced the shutter death of my beloved Nikon. I took some time figuring out my next step (and with the generosity of a dear friend lending me her dslr until I was able to do so, until I could make that leap into a new investment.) Last week I unpacked all the gear that came with my new camera. It swirled around me. I caught my breath. It was beautiful. And yes, overwhelming.

I have to move through it slowly like wading in the shallows of the sea. Baby steps. Baby steps.

It's like someone handing you something (or someone) they know you will love. "Here, you guys will love each other! You're a perfect fit! Go ... connect!" A match made in heaven, yet I am shy and curious. So we begin by fumbling our way into this new relationship, knowing it's true to heart, but still a little fearful of that commitment, that first step. That first image.

Now, maybe if I had an art degree, or a certifiable photography background to build my confidence, it wouldn't overwhelm. Maybe. But I have neither of those things (and on bad days, that self talk shouts at me, my lack of supposed qualifications.) The truth is: I'm just me. I'm self taught. I'm just following my heart in most every (and any) direction it leads me. And that's ok.

I take a deep breathe. It's only glass and mirrors. Plastic and wires (so many wires!) and many tiny parts to accessorize with, to add to my growing collection of gear. And yes, eye candy. And yes, photo love.

Why this confession today? I want to know how you feel about gear. Do your insecurities creep into the excitement and the newness of it? Show me what you've got. Show me a shot of you with your gear.

overcoming your gear: let's call it sharking (and, a giveaway!)

I’ve stood there in shops, staring through glass at glass... coveted glass.

$1599.99. $989.99. $1249.99. Even if I did have the money, how would I ever choose? I need a macro as much as I need a wide-angle. Instead my camera bag is filled with hand-me-downs and compromises, an extremely limited selection of what are generally considered the most ineffective, inexpensive, kit-grade lenses Canon has ever produced.

The Canon EF 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 II lens is a very inexpensive starter lens with a low build quality. As long as the person using the 28-80 knows its optical shortcomings, that designation may be fine. Otherwise, they may permanently be turned off by its performance. Its optics are mediocre at best, making it nearly impossible to get ultra-sharp pictures. The price is cheap, and so is the lens; the overall workmanship and quality is low.  ~ The Digital Picture

Lately, that’s the one I use most often for nature shots, including the one above.

Build quality of the 50mm f/1.8 is very cheap (as you might expect). This lens feels more like a toy than a piece of optics, with plastic contruction right down to the lens mount.

There is not much to this lens. There is no distance window or markings. There is barely even a focus ring - and the tiny ring that is there is barely usable. Only five non-rounded aperture blades are used in this lens, leading to poor bokeh (image quality of out of focus areas).  ~ The Digital Picture

That’s the one I use for portraits, though I'd give it a better review than that.

And that’s pretty much it. A lensbaby for play, as-yet unmastered. A 10-20mm wide angle that’s slow, tough to focus precisely, and distorting around the edges. All mounted to a camera body that’s widely considered to be the beginner point for SLRs. Except it’s been my starting point for years.

I have never used a good lens, let alone a great one. The same goes for a camera body. I’m afraid to even pick one up for the sake of mortgage payments.

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Our village is filling up with summer residents, rich folk from the States, England, all points in Europe. With the onslaught of Porsche SUVs comes an onslaught of boats that eat money, sails that literally sparkle, crews outfitted in matching gear.

We’ve got a 40-year-old Shark, adopted, a family of small boats not seen much around these parts. Justin’s spent years sandblasting the keel, replacing the bulkheads, poring the internet for used sails.

"It’s so demoralizing," he said after yesterday’s race. "We came last. I can’t compete with those guys. They’re laughing at us. I don’t even have a roller furling for the jib. The rigging is from the 1960s. There’s no way I can race that boat. I don’t know why I bother."

Later, when the race results came in, Justin was shocked to discover that he hadn’t actually come last. He’d beaten two boats of the fleet. Two better-equipped boats designed to go fast. He beat them because he’s a good sailor. Not because of his boat, but in spite of it.

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I feel the limitations of my gear every time I reach for my camera. Clunky, lightweight, noisy, imprecise. I see it when I download, my best-case focusing turning out about as well as I imagine others’ worst-cases.

But every now and then, someone who knows about cameras looks at my images and says, “What do you shoot with?” and I tell them. And in that moment, I get... props.

None of this is a competition, but indulge my metaphor: when it comes to light-bending and composition and storytelling with my camera, plenty of people are ahead of me. I’ll never catch them—not with this glass. But I’m not DFL, either (to borrow from the nautical, Dead F*cking Last).

And for now, I’m content with that. I’ll keep pushing, nudging, compensating, overcoming, until $1249.99 falls from the sky into my lap.

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Hello Giveaway!

It’s random giveaway time from our friends at Hello Canvas.

Leave a comment here between now and Tuesday at midnight, and you could win a 20x24 canvas of your photo of choice from Hello Canvas! The prompt: What’s your relationship to your gear? Does it define you? Delight you? Confine you? What are you most grateful for, and how do you see your stable of lenses and equipment evolving in the next year?

Also, winners from our Hello Gorgeous mini contest will be announced on Tuesday. Wheeee!

The winner of the Hello Canvas 20x24 canvas print is Bekkah of Through the Lens, our 68th commenter. Congratulations, Bekkah! And thanks so much to everyone for sharing your thoughts on gear, both today's and tomorrow's (and wishlists).

Perfectly Imperfect Focus

When I first started shooting photography, I wanted perfectly crisp shots that were so focused they made you want to reach out and touch them. This was my goal with every single picture. When I did not achieve this, I felt like I had failed. It is funny how my photography beginnings paralleled my daily life. I wasted so many years trying to live up to this standard of perfection that others had outlined for me. You want to talk about setting yourself up to fail, try living up to other people's standards.

A couple of years ago, I was introduced to the Lensbaby and shooting for me became a new adventure. With the lens being manual, I had to go back to my film shooting roots and set my shutter speed and aperture manually. I admit, I was not a fan of the lens the first day I used it. I could not get my images sharp to save my life and I had become so dependent on using the semi-automatic settings on my camera that I had forgotten how to manually change my settings. Around this same time, I noticed a shift in my life. I had lost my identity, I was not sleeping well, I hated my job and I was still trying to live up to an impossible standard of perfection. I went on a hunt for the perfect hobby, thinking I would "find" myself in one of the five or so I did all at once. It did not work. I was still unhappy.

When I stopped trying to shoot the perfect picture, I started to appreciate the perfect imperfection of the lens. I discovered I loved shooting macro images of flowers. When I stopped trying to be perfect and embraced the simple pleasure of making a photograph, I found myself looking for imperfections in everything around me. It was this letting go of perfection that helped me love myself. Loving myself changed everything for me. I cut myself some slack, stopped apologizing for the person I was and embraced every single imperfect thing about myself.

Over the past year, I have been discovering who I am growing into. I will not lie and say the process has been pain-free. It has been downright painful, but the easiest thing I have been able to do is let go of perfection completely. Only God is perfect. And, if He can love me for who I am, imperfections and all, who am I to not love myself? This simple fact is when everything came into focus for me. Loving yourself...it starts there.

Words and self-portrait (reflection in The Bean, Chicago, IL) courtesy of Honorary Sisters / Guest Blogger Lucrecer Braxton, the woman beyond Art Slam.

get your mobile moment on tv network ovation

Two years ago I was hard at work on Project 365, hauling around my hefty digital SLR in a backpack that served as my purse each day for 365 days. And while that experience taught me to move through the day in a more observant way, the weight of that camera held me back, though I didn't realize it at the time.

When I saw something that moved me, I'd have to take the backpack off, fumble with it to extract my camera, turn the camera on and take off the lens cap, manually adjust the settings, make a few images, turn the camera off, figure out where I put the lens cap and put it back on the camera, squeeze the camera back into my backpack, and put the pack back on my back. And the images had no where to go. They sat on my camera until I got home and squeezed in the time to plug in my USB cable, download the images to my computer, process them, export them, and then upload them to my blog to share the experience. And if I remembered, I might tweet a link to the post to my Twitter followers. This process could easily take 24 hours or more.

Since January, I'm once again shooting everyday but in a very different way. I'm shooting, processing and sharing images exclusively with my iPhone. Now, don't get me wrong, my iPhone has not replaced my SLR, but it's expanding my creative capacity. It's freed me up to make and share images more spontaneously as I move through the day. So now, when I see that fleeting magic moment, I can very quickly lift my iPhone, shoot, process, post the image to my iPhoneography journal powered by Posterous (via email), and see a link to the image automatically appear as a tweet in my Twitter stream. This entire process takes less than 60 seconds and keeps my creativity firing more frequently each day.

In fact, had it not been for my iPhone, I wouldn't have been able to share real-time images documenting Odette's much anticipated reunion with her daughters from Rwanda and the tenderness of a heroic Jen Lemen with all of you on Twitter. Sure, I made my best images from that week-long documentary experience with my SLR, but the iPhone images served a critical purpose... they connected nearly 3,000 of us in the moment as the moment occured.

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So now it's your chance to document the corners of your world with your iPhone or your cell phone for Ovations Framed Art Race 2010 competition. Upload your most creative cell phone images to the Ovation community for a chance to be showcased in a My Art spot on air. But you've got to move fast, the deadline to get your shots in is tomorrow, May 8! Good luck

iPhone Photography Intrigue

I've always been drawn to artful process of photography. I make my documentary images by selecting lenses and adjusting the settings on my DSLR. Then I rely on Aperture, my photo editing application, to make minor image adjustments. I might increase the definition of edges to emphasize the texture, tone down harsh highlights, trade color for monochrome, or add a subtle vignette to pull the viewer closer to my subject. But I don't use Photoshop and frankly, if someone asked me to smooth out her smile lines, I'd frown. Admittedly, I use a light hand when it comes to digital image processing.

But I am becoming increasingly intrigued with iPhone Photography as a means of exploring my fascination with composition, and have just started experimenting with some clever iPhone apps. I'm finding that because I don't take these images too seriously, I'm eager to try more liberal processing experiments on them - like making quick marks in a sketch book or scribbling phrases in a journal. I'm allowing myself to create a bit of fiction, and it's been really fun. So if you too are looking to loosen up a bit with your iPhone, consider downloading these cool apps in the App Store and share your results with us.

ShakeItPhoto ($.99) - Like Polaroid for your iPhone, this app lets you shoot, retake and shake. Shaking your iPhone gives you a cropped and color washed Polaroid-esque image. (See my image at left, above.) Check out the ShakeItPhoto Best Of flickr group to see some super cool results and this experiment using ShakeItPhoto and another app, Colorsplash.

CameraBag ($1.99) - Quick and easy photo filters to adjust the mood of your iPhone photos. This app gives you 10 image filters such as Helga (square-format, washed out highlights and old-school vignetting) and 1974 (like your mother's camera: faded & tinted). (See my image at right, above, with 1962 filter - high contrast B&W.) Check out the CameraBag flickr group and this fabulous set that inspired me to explore.

Got any other iPhone Photography tips or resources? Do share.