Starting a Journal

As I class myself an amateur photographer, doing this purely as a hobby, I thought it would be interesting for me to keep a record of my progress. I enjoy learning new photography techniques, compositions, post-processing and kit; all as much a part of of my hobby as the actual taking photos!

I originally started learning photography when I was 18 on a Media Studies course at York College. Back then it was using 35mm film on SLR cameras. I loved that course. Learnt how to use a dark room (accidentally exposed another student's film roll by turning on the light when they weren't ready) and develop the images, setting up the lighting and how to actually use a camera! I absolutely loved it, but have to be honest, I've forgotten most of the details. Once I finished the course, I didn't pick up a camera until I turned 40 during one of the Covid lockdowns.

I'd had an Instagram account for a while, taking photos using my phone's camera and mostly just concentrating on how to compose the images. While a good phone camera can produce great images, I wanted to use a DSLR as, I felt, it was the next step back into 'proper' photography. Obviously you can now take images in RAW format, so really the main limitation is the lens, etc. With machine learning/AI, it closes the gap even further.

Ultimately, my choice was to re-learn how a DSLR camera worked, what techniques and kit could be used to produce the images that I find interesting? This meant reading photography books like Michael Freeman's Photographer's Eye, Finn Beales' The Photography Storytelling Workshop and - most importantly - Bryan Peterson's Understanding Exposure.

While my aim with my photography is to get the initial exposure as close to the final image, I do like black and white photography. I love the classic look and how the images can be reminiscent of a still from a classic noir. As black and white presents a slight level of unreality, I feel I can push the image further than I could if it was in colour. Raising the contrasts, pushing the colour levels, etc. However, as my camera is a colour DSLR, this means I would need to convert the image in post-processing. For this I decided to use Adobe Lightroom. So that's another part discipline I set myself to learn.

This journal will take a stab at recording my journey.