Those of you reading the list lately may have noticed that I have a project going on, that forces me to explore some new land (read learn new techniques). How a beeeep should you avoid noticing that? With my endless ranting questions ;-)
I have been talking about using longer lenses, building hides and so on. This has been great fun, and I am learning a lot about photography and birds. My longest glass that is usable is 500mm (with converter it tends to be too soft), so I have to crop the pictures to make them interesting. This has made me realise that I am a lot better at composing in viewfinder then I am with composing on computer screen. I have been thinking about this. I have some ideas about why. First: It is that in the field I compose more on instinct. I am there, and I have emotions about the motifs. My heart is involved, and I believe that it is my heart that makes the composing decisions. Back at home, the motifs are more distant to me, so there I compose by brain (and as you know, that's not much of a brain). The second reason has to do with the decisive moment: When I shot slides my mind was in "capture mode" (sorry Shel, I know you don't like that word). When pushing the button I knew that what is in frame, stays in frame, and what is out of frame, stays out. (Everybody who has tried masking slides in glassless frames, knows that you do everything you can to avoid that activity later). Now, when shooting digitally, being forced to crop later something happens with my mindset. There is no decisive moment in post processing on computer. There is always possible to go back. What I'm saying is that I think I need the decisive moment to make a good composition. I also need to be emotionally connected with the motif in some way. But what do I do about this? Practise is one obvious answer. And I will practise. But, I also have a strong belief in the power and wisdom of this list. I would really surprise me if it doesn't burp up some good ideas and advise. Tim Mostly harmless (just plain Norwegian) Never underestimate the power of stupidity in large crowds (Very freely after Arthur C. Clarke, or some other clever guy)
