New Year

2010 has been an exciting year for me. It was the year that I really "did photography", the year that I owned my own DSLR (I was just renting before). It was a year that I learned alot about photography. It was the year that I committed alot of mistakes. It was the year that I accepted paid photography work (four times). It was the year that I started this blog.

As 2011 is starting I have a few thoughts in mind about improving my photography as a whole. And here are some of the things that I have thought about or listed in my puny brain.

(1) Shoot, Shoot and Shoot. I need to shoot more to learn more. If I shoot less, I learn less. But here's the thing that I want to do for this year with shoots. I want to do themed shoots every week, say week 1 I'd do product photos, week 2 I'd do landscapes, week 3 I'd do studio fashion photography. I guess I want to make things better.

(2) In relation to (1), I want to be more concerned about having a theme in all of my photographs. Not just a matter of shoot and pray and shoot and pray. I want every shot to have a meaning, I want to work out my composition skills, I want to learn more about lighting! And with every shot that I want to take I want these things to matter, I want the light to convey a message as well as the composition. I guess this is a hard thing to do but I believe it is doable.

(3) Improve my post processing skills. I have books from Scott Kelby about getting the shot, also books about harnessing Photoshop CS5,  "Adobe Photoshop CS5 book for Digital Photographers" and I haven't finished reading them. I have another book about LR3 from "Vision and Voice" by David Du Chemin and I haven't read it too. Reading is always the start for me. 

I want to improve PP for alot of reasons, I see that my images colors differ as light changes (white balance), I wanted to recreate what I see and I want a generally equal look at the images I take whether the ambient light changes or not.

So far these are the two major things that I need to work out.