I don’t know how exactly I decided to start this project… I
guess it must have been a mixture of reasons:
. being my wedding over, I need a new project to focus my
attention on and something that inspires me and pushes my creativity
. the fact of living in this beautiful city with so many
good features and the best lighting in the world (by the way , have you noticed
the light we have had these last two days? Oh my… Everywhere I drive or walk
to, I can see hundreds of beautiful pics…
. I also want to be able to take good product shots… I look
at the pictures I take of the stationery I design and mmm, it really doesn’t
make justice to the designs… the images could be much better and I want to
improve this…
. and of course inspired by Maree Louw, our wedding photographer.
Oh wow, she really is amazing. I’ve not stopped looking at our wedding pictures
this week, I totally love them!!! (you’ll see them very soon) And it’s not only
the lighting, composition and editing of the images, it’s the way she has been
able to capture the essence of the moment and in a picture show how the day
really was. And that’s what I think is the most beautiful and difficult thing
about photography: being able to capture in just one still image, a moment, a
feeling or a sensation. If you want to see Maree’s work, please check her web
here and if you are looking for a photographer, you know who is my number one
recommended. If you are more into photography, you can also check her film and
lomo blog here which is so cool!. Oh, and Maree, I hope you don’t mind that I‘m
using the same layout for this project as your blog… it just makes the pictures
look so delicate and beautiful….
So the truth is that I don’t know much about photography and
even many times I’ve tried to learn about exposure, aperture, shutter speed,
different lenses or the importance in shooting raw, I never really got it. I
think I’m pretty good with the computer so my lack of knowledge on how to shoot
might have gotten “unnoticed” (perhaps only by people like me, heheh) thanks to
photoshop and editing. But now I want to learn how to take proper pictures. I
want to be able to shoot images in full manual mode. So what best way to learn
this than by practicing? As they say: you only need to spend 10000 hours of
your time to become a pro in a certain discipline. It’s not that I want to
become a photographer (besides there are way too many good ones out there) but
I just want to be able to take a picture, look at it and say “wow, that really
is an amazing photo”!
So inspired by 52 Photos Project and many other Photography
initiatives, I decided to start my own “Photography Project”. The task is very
simple: just take a picture or series of pictures once a week. I’m not going to
put themes or tasks but make sure every week I photograph something different
so I can practice different styles of photography.
So for my first week, what better thing to shoot that
something I see everyday in Cape Town: Lions Head and Table Mountain. I took these
pictures last afternoon with my husband camera (which normally just seats
unused under the bed): a NIKON 80D with a 87mm lense (not that I know what that
means, heheh). I shot everything in Program mode (at least trying to move away from
AUTO, hehe) and then edited them in Lightroom with some cool presets I got a
few days ago.
Can’t wait to shoot more pics and learn a bit more. Have an
awesome weekend everyone!
