Until about a year ago I didn’t really have a lot of interest in photography. I just pointed and pressed. Sometimes the result turned out OK, sometimes it didn’t. I never really cared because I figured I had all of my memories inside my head anyway.
Whilst I still hold this to be true and I don’t believe any photo can capture the essence of being somewhere, living with someone who adores photography for long enough means that you grow to love it, by osmosis or something.
I had a friend a long time ago who was brilliant at photography. This was back in the days of film cameras and my friend used to develop all his own photos at the local dark room. It was all too scientific for me and I got bored, pointed, pressed and took the films into the local pharmacy to be developed.
The advent of digital cameras did change things for me a bit. I started to be able to see when I’d chopped the top of someone’s head off, or shot something out of focus. I could delete it and try again. It made me concentrate more. It made me start to learn some patience.
Last June for my birthday I got a new camera. Himself, who used to work in Jessops, chose it for me. It’s just a Canon Powershot A590IS. Essentially it’s still a point and shoot but it does have a ton of manual features. And suddenly through Himself’s enthusiasm and through a genuine love for this blog I became interested in making my photos better. I wanted the blog to have my photos on, not ones I’d taken from Flickr or weheartit.com. And I wanted them to look OK.
I still have a long way to go. But I do have a good teacher. 
A teacher who insists I cannot under any circumstances have a better camera until I’ve learned how to use the one I’ve got. Fair enough.
It’s been a holiday weekend here in the UK this weekend and accordingly the weather has been atrocious. So I’ve been stuck inside. One thing I’ve been complaining about recently is that a lot of the food photographs that I take inside (I would take more of them outside if it weren’t for the weather), are yellow. Admittedly, we seem to have a very yellow house, but still. So this weekend I learned about Custom White Balance, which changes this….
to this….
and this…
to this…
Yeah, I’m a work in progress, but I’m happy!
And I’ve noticed another thing. Nothing, with the exception of being on my yoga mat, has made me so aware of the present moment as this new found pleasure. Discovering that taking a photograph is not just about snapping a moment for memory; a building, a group of people, a party, but instead an apple, or a daisy or a cloud. Just becausee they are there at that moment.
And in my year of mindfulness, that seems somehow serendipitous.
