I Feel Like I've Been Abusing My Camera.

I feel like I've been abusing my camera. Not from over use, but from under use.

I've been thinking a whole lot on how I should work on my strengthening my photography. Major emphasis on thinking - there hasn't been much doing.

I've been into photography since about the fourth grade [let me tell you those pictures will never present themselves. anywhere.]. First it was flowers, and then nieces and nephews, and then over-dramatic self portraits of myself. I don't really know when my photography started getting better, but somewhere along the lines of my life, it did.

I want to work on posing. I want to work on angle. And editing. And I want to know how to function all the settings on that dang canon that I love so dearly.

I've been slowly learning all this, but I'm dying for everything to come together. For me to finally be as good as I hope to be.

I never know who to practice on. I practice on my friends quite a bit, but that's far too much in my comfort zone. I need people I don't know quite as well. But I don't want to do that until I get better? It's some sort of huge repeating cycle.

I went on a shoot with my friend, Stephanie, yesterday. [click here.] It was nice to finally have my camera out for something other than yearbook. And don't get me wrong, taking pictures for my school yearbook is a great way to practice. But in some ways, I feel like I'm starting from square one because I haven't had much experience in that type of photography. But at least I'm getting more practice, right?

There's a fallen pine tree in my backyard that we haven't hauled away yet [it makes a great backdrop]. So I decided to set up my tripod and have a mini photoshoot with... myself. Because I was craving using my camera, decided it would be good posing practice, and hey, I was wanting a new profile pic anyways. It was a win, win, win situation.

Tomorrow I'm going to take pictures at an LDS Temple near my house. I've been wanting more practice with buildings and objects, so here it goes.

I don't want to be just a portrait photographer, or just a wedding photographer, or nature photographer, or fashion photographer, or building photographer. I want to be all of the above. And more, however many different photographers there are out there, I want to take pictures of whatever they're taking pictures of.

So I made a new board on Pinterest today. All of pictures I want to recreate. Challenging pictures that won't be easy. Pictures that need props. Pictures of objects. I'm excited. Excited to start actually doing something. Hopefully I actually do.

And that's all.

//Sarah