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Photography just isn't what it used to be. 

I traded in my film camera for a digital camera a few years ago. What a learning curve that was! 

My first digital camera was a low end Nikon DSLR ( which stands for digital single lens reflex). I bought it at Target and it came with two zoom lenses; one a regular zoom (which brings things in closer) and the other a wide angle zoom, which enabled me to go from normal view to a wide angle view. The concept is the same as on the point and shoot cameras in which there are no lens changes.

At first, I was extremely apprehensive to use it. Let's face it. I'd been using a film camera for over twenty five years; two totally different animals. What I had just purchased was a mini computer with all the capabilities of a film camera without having to know how to use a film camera. However, it was crucial to read and understand the instruction guide. And having had experience with a film camera made ithe correlation to some menu selections on the digital camera somewhat easier to understand.

I can thoroughly understand how baffling it is to use a digital camera for those who have never used a film camera. The instruction manuals can be absolutely daunting.

However, this is more about trying to capture an image. The image that accompanies this blog took me 60+ shots to get what I wanted. I'll bet it doesn't look like that. But here's how it went.

A couple of summers ago, there were days when the breeze was just rustling through the windows. I couldn't help but notice how it swept the lace curtains in one of my windows, as it very swiftly flung them toward me and just as quickly receded. My objective at that point was to try to capture the "best possible" rendering of what I thought would show how the curtain flowed as the wind took it. 

With my new digital camera in hand, setting it to the shutter speed and aperture I thought would produce the best exposure and results for which I was seeking, I positioned myself and waited...and waited...and waited for the wind to present itself. When it did, I would brace myself against something stationary to prevent myself from moving the camera, allowing just the motion from the curtain to be captured. I don't recall how many different days, the countless hours and how much time standing and waiting it took for me to finallly get "the one" that I wanted but it did take over sixty shots to get it.

The shot looks pretty simple and straight-forward but in reality, it took much more time than one would expect to get "that one" image. 

I realize that many/most people look at a photograph and really don't think twice about it. I suspect they think it was very easy to capture, when actually it took a lot more time and effort to produce "that one" image. Sure, there's always the luck shot where you get what you want the first time out. But more often than not, what the photographer wants to capture takes much more effort than one can see. And the bad images far outweigh the good or great ones. 

So next time you look at a photograph, look at it the way you'd look at a painting. Just because we don't have a brush, doesn't mean we don't paint.