I am getting nearer to retirement so I started thinking about what will I do after I retire. I have always had an interest in photography and decided that I would transform myself from a “snapshot taker” to a “photographer”.
I started this blog to document my experiences, thoughts, and findings as I progress through my transformation. As part of my transformation, for example, I want to learn how to improve my chances for taking a “good photograph” instead of getting lucky once in a while when I “snap a picture”.
Typically, I just pointed my camera and snapped the picture and once in a while it turned out to be pretty good. I did not consciously think about, for example, composition, depth-of-field, aperture, focal length, white balance, or lighting. And I used the automatic camera settings, such as “landscape” or “nighttime”.
As an example, I took the following picture during a gondola ride in Venice. I was sitting at the front of our gondola facing back towards our gondolier. I turned around to take a shot of the gondola in front of us and quickly had to turn back because our gondolier was telling me “Senora, senora, you rock the boat!”. To say the least I had no time to frame up the picture so I was just lucky to get this “good” picture (at least I think it is :-).)