For the Love of Photography

I love photography.

There's just something about it that speaks to my soul in a way no other art form can. A picture is worth a thousand words. Those words can be difficult to find. But finding the words to express to another individual how to capture an image can be even more difficult.

When Blaine asked me to teach him the basics of photography, I thought to myself Alright, cool. I can teach photography. As a dance teacher, I'm accustomed to hands on learning. I'm used working with others. I understand how to share what I know.

But that was dance. This is photography.

Allow me to introduce my camera:

This is not your standard point and shoot camera. This is a Nikon d50, a DSLR, and quite an old one at that. Still, it is my favorite kind of camera and it was on this camera that I taught Blaine the basics of photography. As I taught him, I realized that while it's simple to teach the technical side of photography (shutter speed, aperture, ISO, lens focus), the artistic side is almost impossible to put into words. Sure I taught him basic rules like:

Leading lines...

The Rule of Thirds...

And Depth of Field...

But photography is so much more than all those things. Photography is an experiment. Photography is something intangible. Photography is a reflection of the photographer.

In the end I handed my camera over to Blaine and we just walked around campus with me coaching him on the kind of pictures he could take and how he could make them unique to him. I gave him ideas as we went along and showed him through demonstration how I might handle picturing a particular subject. But I wanted to leave the artistic choices to Blaine. After all, photography is all about personal perception. It takes thousands of photographs to finally figure out. But with patience and several tries, anyone can be a photographer. Anyone can feel the love.