Refreshed and Refocused....
I've been playing with photography since I was a little girl. I've always been fascinated with the concept of creating an image. Looking back, I remember that even when I was very young, I would see events in my mind as 4x6 pictures. When writing fictional stories, or creating plays with my neighborhood friends, I would see the entire story in a picture book format and then create the dialog to go with it.
I started to become a student of photography when I was in high school. That's when it clicked that I could control my tool, my camera, and manipulate the light around me. In doing so, I could capture the image exactly as I'd already seen it in my mind.
I started out with a fully manual Canon slr that was as old as I was and a couple of fixed focal length lenses. It didn't even have automatic focus, so I was manually focusing everything. I'd make my friends sit very still while I'd pick my angle, meter my light, compose my image, CLICK, then write down my settings to match my frame, and wait to see what developed. I'd take the time to really soak in my subject, get to know them from every angle, practice patience and wait for the time to get it right. My how technology has made my passion so much easier. Now I can be much more random about the way I do things, more spontaneous. Yet, recently I've found myself not feeling more creative, but feeling more pressure to just grab what's happening however I can. I've felt like my gift to see the image before I take it has been swept over by taking the image everyone else wants to see.
This weekend when I was spending time with family friends at the beach, I simply forgot that the lens that I'd brought for knock-about didn't function in anything but full manual with the camera body I had packed! It was something that I knew but forgot in my rush to pack the family for a long weekend. It was a bit of a disappointment at first, but then it become the breath of fresh air that I needed. I was forced to be purposeful in the way that I captured my images. There wasn't any auto focus, there wasn't any exposure lock, or focus lock. If I changed my perspective, I had to refocus. If I changed my perspective without refocusing, my image was fuzzy.
Hmmmm....I think that my Abba Father took a minor disappointment and used it to teach me a significant lesson. As my perspective on my life, my priorities and, my work have changed, I haven't stepped back to refocus and that might be why my direction is so fuzzy. CLICK I think I've got it!
Stay tuned......as a take a step back and work on refocusing and recomposing the image of Alicia Horst Photography.
