Sunflower

My interest in photography has always been, in a sense, academic.

In truth, I am not really a practical guy and the technical aspect of taking a picture and developing a print never really appealed to me. Whereas the stimulation and aesthetic pleasure of vicariously enjoying someone else’s carefully crafted simulacra was immensely, is immensely pleasing.

I like to think of myself as a student of the past, images haunt me, as they do you, staring out unknowingly from printed pages across time, space and culture. Often, even when the image is gloriously evocative, one occasionally wishes these pictures could speak. I wrote poor, well not hopelessly poor but very average poems about ‘celluloid stares’ and ‘the dead’, while at university, trying to imagine what they might say. Certainly, I never did as well as Peter Kocan, whose poem, Photograph, memorably evokes that almost national image of “brief, sliding minutes at the wharf” becoming 60 years since the soldier/brother/son/husband in Nanna’s loungeroom fades from all memory.

English teaching gave me a working knowledge of advertising tricks, symbolism and a range of visual literacy frameworks for analysing the final product of someone else’s, usually digital, manipulations. Of course, as a citizen-consumer living in a culture saturated with images, my experiences of the end results of photography are sometimes conscious, and certainly extensive. Now that I have two young daughters, one is even more aware of just how saturated with images our lives have become. Other people’s images. Created by them. Not me.

That is starting to change.

As I said, until last year, my interest in photography had always been academic. One of my personal and professional goals in the last year of the ‘noughties’ was, and still is, to be more of a ‘designer’ and a ‘creator’. Composing, using tools to formulate ‘original’ images – rather than re-using or ‘appropriating’ or plain stealing, employing ‘right-click copy’, that totally expedient mode so many of us use in online settings – is increasingly important to me.

Capturing my own images, with a DSLR camera, seemed like a good first step into the world of photography that would give me my own fodder for Adobe Photoshop, the outrageously expensive software made available to me, for next to nothing at home, by my employer. The only problem, I had no clue what camera to buy and was virtually clueless about the metalanguage, jargon and discourse of photography.

I needed to learn and on reflection, find it interesting to think back on the last 12 months of experiences. Teaching myself about photography, in the digital realm, was not just about this subject but how learning works in our hyper-connected culture. Certainly, if I wanted to be a ‘shooter’ back in the 90s, my learning trajectory would have curved very differently.

Whirlpool has an amazing Australian online forum that has proven invaluable, especially with the purchase of equipment. The photography forum, specifically the DSLR section, has allowed me to connect with those who have direct experience of the gear I didn’t know I needed, if that makes sense. Like with twitter, one doesn’t connect with a static page of information but with real people, all who share their expertise, mistakes and enthusiasms. In this case, the debates and conversation proved invaluable and led to me buying a Nikon D90.

It was nerve-wracking attaching my kits lenses (could not afford the really magnificent lenses) for the first time but joining the Nikonians community and reading up eased my paranoia about dust and dropping them, well almost.

I did read plenty of glossy, pricey magazines too but luckily these were supplemented with a wealth of back issues available from the local library. These helped with digestible articles for beginners on every aspect of photography. The glossary sections and tutorials for novices were particularly useful.

Lynda.com is a great video tutorial resource which led me to realise that mastering Adobe Bridge was more important than Photoshop, for the budding photographer needing to organise and tag his collections.

Flickr really transformed my experience  from a reasonably solitary pursuit into a public one, with a sense of community and more importantly, for my photography, feedback from other enthusiasts. Twitter complemented brilliantly well of course.

I began to realise, from Flickr groups found, that macro photography held a particular fascination and I invested in kenko extension tubes, a tripod, focusing rail and most importantly, my best lens, the 105mm Micro-Nikkor. Suddenly spider experts were identifying what was in my backyard and tagging my photos. Advice and praise was generously given. My photos had an audience and started to get better.

Cicada

Learning has to be more than the manual. Learning is social and something to enjoy with your family.  My daughters, aged 3 and 6, are my companions and their enthusiasm for ‘our’ photos is a joy. I suspect they have a capitalist streak too, as Lucy had the idea I paid $1 for each spider or insect, they found, that could be photographed. They listened to me explain, on our rambles, what I was trying to do and joined in enthusiastically as they started to understand. ‘Wrong lens, Dad?’ said Sarah when I cussed one day. Listening to them talk about ‘the light’ and say, ‘stop Dad, check this out, what a magical, golden glow’ almost made me cry one day.

Recently, a professional photographer had to take my picture, with my family, for a newspaper article and we got chatting. ‘Are you a shooter?’ she asked (obviously impressed with my command of the lingo).

Not really, I said, I’m still learning.

Sunflower

Here is a slide show of my macro photos and spiders or, if you’re feeling strong, my entire Flickr collection.

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Comments(6)

  1. Don’t know where you get the time to write Darcy but thank you for that piece. I am always intrigued by how photographers developing a grammar for visual literacy. Of course it is practise, practise, practise, but the bodies of work that attract me go far deeper and keep me thinking when the lights are out. I’ve always returned to the work of Diane Arbus and as a critic no one offers more insight than Geoff Dyer in a number of his works, in particular Missing of the Somme and But Beautiful. The hard copy photography books in my library, from the Photo Book to National Geographic publications and including specific collections are always on the move. In this “easy digital age” we can snap without thinking but every shot is available for analysis if we are up to exploration.

    • Darcy Moore

    • 14 years ago

    Thanks Victor. Glad you liked this piece. Hopefully, when in Shanghai next holidays, my photographic skills will improve.

    I, as you know, also love Geoff Dyer’s non-fiction and novels. His insights into photography, in ‘The Ongoing Moment’ , make for grand reading. His work is littered with observational gems about ‘image’ and I highly recommend his work to all.

    Thanks for the tip: I will investigate Diane Arbus.

  2. You are on so many amazing journeys Darcy. I cannot keep up. I am delighted you are such a great model to your girls. 🙂 I do enjoy your photography and your passion for learning although I profess no knowledge at all of the art of photography. 🙂

  3. […] Being able to joing HDR groups and share photos on flickr changes the experience of photography and makes it social. Learning is social and fun. Here are myfirst fledgling HDRs on flickr. I have discussed this in another piece I wrote about learning photography. […]

  4. […] unit: Nikon D90 with 105mm and 70-300mm Nikkor lenses, as well as a 11-16mm Tamron lens. Here is an article on learning in the 21st century if you are new to digital […]

  5. […] and encouraging. My role as a deputy principal at a high school has led me to write about learning to be a shooter and HDR photography in an effort to share how learning is social, collaborative and about […]

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