How to take Photographs (1- The Why)

🙂 🙂 No seriously 😀

Photographers don’t read this. I am not a photographer and I don’t know the first thing about photography and yet some people like my pictures. How so?

I cheat and play tricks and I mess about a lot and by the law of averages, sometimes I get lucky.

Please keep in mind that I have never claimed to be anything that I am not.

(Big game hunter,Pirate, Jungle explorer…. oh I could go on…) Shut up Fizz!

I have never claimed to be a photographer or tried to sell you anything and all of the pictures that I post on this blog are free for you to download (just click on a picture to open it, right click and select “save as”) and use in any way that you like.

Starting with the basics: Why do I take photographs? It is so that I can learn about things. I need to identify a subject, that is the first step. Once I know it’s name then I can read about it.

I take a lot of pictures and try to get my subject from every angle because if I don’t know what it is then I don’t know what particular feature is going to prove the ID.

I learnt this a long time ago. This one is a Common Darter and in this case it is the yellow stripe on the outside of it’s legs that proves that. I never know what feature it is going to be and I can’t remember everything without a picture (lots of pictures from different angles)

This next picture is a tachinid fly called Pelatachina tibialis and it is the reddish hue on the hind tibia that identifies it. How could anyone remember that sort of detail without a picture?

It is pure coincidence if some of my pictures also turn out to be quite pretty. I go out looking for knowledge and trying to find something that I haven’t seen before and don’t recognise.

Often I can’t find anything new and exciting and so I pass the time taking pictures of things that I am very, very familiar with.

I take pictures just because something is so beautiful and I am in awe of it. I can’t understand why it is so beautiful. Not just for me, surely not? So I like to share things.

These turned out to be Rabbits (and it was the ears this time 🙂 )

I am writing this post because a good friend of mine in Oz has bought himself a new camera and he wants to take photographs like fodrambler. He already can, some of his pictures are really good and I would have loved to have taken them. I thought that the easiest way to show him what I do would be via a few posts.

I  can’t put everything into one post or it will be five miles long so I am going to do this as a series of posts. It is raining heavily outside so I am not going to get any great pictures today. I will of course take Fizz out but it will be all for her, no cameras today.

So I am nearly finished with this first post. Please don’t post comments about what a great photographer I am because when I show you how easy it was to trick you into thinking that….. Well, it will just be embarrassing for all of us and I am going to show you.

Photographers probably already know what I am up to but this is for the rest of us. It is going to be a “How to cheat” guide.

Next…. let the cheating begin.

This was one of the first pictures that I ever took and I did find out what it is….

It is beautiful.

But why is it beautiful?