The price of success

I was thinking the other day. Yes, I know that's a dangerous thing to do, but just occasionally it does us all good to pump the adrenaline by taking a small risk.

As I was saying, I was thinking the other day about the number of my photographs that are complete failures and how so few of the pictures I take really do give me pleasure. It wasn't always so: at least, I don't think it was, although I suppose that might be just an effect of the famous rose-tinted spectacles of old age. Before the days of digital photography I used a 35mm single lens reflex camera with a variety of lenses. I manipulated the aperture and exposure time for each shot, calculating what depth of field I wanted and which part of the picture I wanted to be correctly exposed. I took time to make sure that the main subject was properly in focus. Nowadays I am much lazier, expecting the camera to do all that for me and jiggling the result on the computer if, say, the exposure is not quite what I want or if I want to alter the overall colour. I can't, of course, do anything about pictures that are out of focus or where there is evidence of camera shake. All the same, the results are rarely more than mediocre, as witness the pictures on Fern's blog.

I would like to splash out on a more complex camera which would enable me better to control things like aperture and exposure times. Both those I use at the moment are supposed to allow manual control but I find them cumbersome in that mode and the range of options too limited. But the old cliche applies here: a poor workman always blames his tools. It's true that a talented photographer can take a good picture with an old box Brownie camera, so I am reduced to blaming myself and myself alone for my disappointing results. Of course, dedication and application are necessary for success in any field, and that's what I am lacking here. Photographers who produce the best landscape pictures (which is my preferred genre) will usually spend ages working out just which angle of view is best and what time of day will produce the light from the best angle. They may wait several hours before conditions are right, or they may even need to return day after day until they get what they want. I don't have that sort of time and, in any case, I couldn't be bothered to go through all that rigmarole. Just occasionally I get lucky, as in this picture of the River Trout in Vermont:


That one was a lucky shot. We were driving and had just turned off a major road before crossing a bridge. I glanced to my left and saw the cattle approaching the river. By the time I had stopped and gone back to the bridge they were drinking - and the picture was made.

Portraits are not really my cup of tea and I rarely bother to try taking them. I will attempt the odd shot when people aren't expecting their photo to be taken or, with the grandchildren, take so many pictures that they lose interest in the camera and what I am doing, as in this picture of my granddaughter which I like enormously: