It has been a while since I posted on my blog. These are weird times, I even wrote a blog about that. If you haven’t read it yet click here . I feel that I need to write this blog in the hopes that it will get me out of the state where I am in.

My Photography

It has been sometime that I do not like the outcome of my pictures. I do have a difficulty to transfer that image that I created in my mind to my pictures. Often I leave home with an image in mind, and by the time I return home I took totally different pictures and not what I had in mind. Distracted, not knowing - I have no idea.

I am taking a photography course online, called Sharpness and Dept of Field. This course is on Zoom.nl and it has been helping me a lot. (I am not sponsored by Zoom)

I am thorn between all the photography genres that I like; Portraits, Landscape, and street photography .

• Portraits; here is already where it goes wrong i think. I don’t always have a subject. The say make use of your inner-circle; family and friends that is. Well they are not always available or they don’t like their picture taken or they don’t want you to take their picture. There goes practising out the window

• Landscape: I do have a few shots in mind but have difficulty realising them. Storms (trace of lightning), Mountains, rivers, beaches, sunset, sunrise, nature - where I live I don’t have all of these. I need to travel to be able to take these pictures.

• Street photography; I live in one of the most beautiful cities of Europe, but still i manage not to take street photo’s here. Ok, this is not totally true, I don’t do it as often as I would like to

Am I crazy to like so many different photography genres at ones? How do I do it and how do I get the most out of my pictures and not staying stuck in this mindset. I follow some prominent photographers on Social Media (Instagram) and I try to get inspiration from their photography, but what is does is discourage me. The Internet can be a scary place for photographers.

Presets

The internet can be a scary place for photographers. There are many social media platform to choose from and most of them are based on likes. Likes only tells me how many people actually liked my picture, but it is not a measurement that determines good photography. Ok, what is good photography and who determines that ones photography is good. I am riding the social media train of terror in regards to “likes” and I want to get of this train - but don’t know how. Next to all the photography materials on line, a lot of photographers are promoting their presets. What are presents you ask? Well just that pre-set of settings that will determine colour pallets. Some photo editing software allows you to save the setting of your editing, because it can come in handy if you want to use it again.

I fell for it - I have presets. A LOT of them. I bought them from 1 particular brand. To be hones I don’t like them. none of them - Why? Well I bought them based on the pictures illustrating the editing with these presents. In the instructions of most of the presents being sold they inform you can customise the presets as you like. BUT I want my picture to look like on the preset website. Newsflash; THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN.

I Found this out the hard way - These presets are created to work perfectly with certain stock photos taken specifically to promote these presents. Or, presets are created to suit the shooting style of photographer for which the presents are created. (does it make sense)

Or, you must have already developed your photography style in such a way that you know what presets work for your style of photography AND you have the time and knowledge to sit behind your laptop / PC and go through all the options in the editing software to customise the presets that you just bought. This will always be the case when you buy someone else’s presets. This happened, but there was a time where I did not use presets.

The time I enjoyed my photography and did not use any presets

There was a time where I did enjoy my photography and I did not use any presets. The picture here above was taken in 2018 on the Island of Aruba. You might recognise it from the gallery in on my website or on my IG account. I have 2 versions of this picture; One just plain out of the camera and this one which went through Photoshop. I found this editing sequence on YouTube from a prominent YouTuber / Photographer, and till this day I still use part of this editing. There are no presents involved - first you sharpen the picture, than contrast, than light. No colour slider is touched. At least, not the way I did it.

But, I don’t remember exactly how I manage these colours. One thing is certain, I want to go back to this. This picture represents my style and no presents. This picture is for me the joy of photography. I have this picture on my journal.

I need to find my way back

I need to find my way back, I want to find my way back where I enjoyed my photography and not worrying with social media, likes, photography style of Instagramers / Youtubers. I need to start taking pictures for me; the landscape, the portraits of friends and family, the street shots - but all for me. Since I shoot RAW I will need to get a better understanding of the possibilities of the editing software that I am using and not load a preset and expect a wonder. Maybe I will in due time develop my own presets for my photography.