Yesterday I braved the Saturday crowds at Como Conservatory to take advantage of the overcast skies. I think the filtered light on heavily overcast days is perfect light for capturing the rocks and greens of the Japanese Garden there. It also makes the water lily garden outside the conservatory dramatic and easy to photograph.
Learning how to take advantage of different kinds of light to photograph different kinds of subjects makes me love almost every kind of light I encounter.
I’m still experimenting with my new Canon 5D Mark III camera. Earlier in the week I bought a used 300 mm F/4 lens but decided that the fixed telephoto lens just didn’t fit the way I photograph. I returned the lens and after researching zoom telephoto lenses, purchased a 70 – 200 mm zoom F/2.8 Tamron lens.
Yesterday was my maiden voyage using the new lens on my camera. I was so excited about the F/2.8 capability of the lens that I shot almost all my photos using an aperture of F/2.8. It was one of those newbie mistakes that I often make.
And it is a great way to learn!
For some of the photos, the shallow depth of field worked great, but the landscapes I made were quite mixed in their effectiveness. When I focused on something far in front of the rest of the landscape, the blurry background made me blink and think that my eyes weren’t seeing the photo correctly.
Have you ever learned something new or gotten something with a new capability and then become so enamored with that new thing that you over-used it just because you could?
That’s what I did!
I find I often do that in photography whenever I learn something new or discover a new tool. With Adobe Lightroom, I loved adding drama and pizazz to my photos by upping the saturation or contrast in every single photo I edited at first. It took me time and many mistakes to learn how to more subtly edit photos.
Quote of the day: “So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.” ― Neil Gaiman
As a software engineer I saw myself and others do similar things with new techniques, tools, and methodologies. Anyone who has worked in the corporate world has seen the “flavor of the week” in human resource management, employee motivation, or whatever the corporate hot button is that particular year. It’s like a pendulum where we swing way far to the right, then sometimes in reaction to that, swing far to the left, and if we’re lucky, finally come back to center.
Yesterday, I shot almost everything with a VERY shallow depth of field. So many of the photos would have been better if more of the photo had been sharp and in focus. Some of the photos gave a dramatic demonstration of depth of field like this one where one of the water lilies is in focus and the others are not.
I like the painterly effect I achieved here (quite accidentally) but would also love to see another photo with all three of the water lilies in focus.
Embracing Mistakes, Embracing Learning
As humans we often learn by making mistakes, or by seeing the consequences of decisions made long ago. New ideas or tools often see us swinging like a pendulum first one way and then another.
Mastery and wisdom grow in proportion to our willingness to try new things, make mistakes, and then learn from those mistakes.
What mistakes have brought new learning to you lately? Are you embracing your mistakes as a learning opportunity?
May you walk in beauty.
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