What is Photography to You?

I had a class with Ansel Adams before he died in the 70's. He had a way of looking at the scenery around us and seeing how the light was painting a picture and then capturing it on film. I learned a lot about seeing things around me from him. I saw how he looked for contrast in either lighting or shape or texture. He was the best in the world at looking at the amount of light present and then adapting the film to capture all of it. He created a system of exposure called the Zone System where exposure was set to capture the minimal detail needed in a photo and then the film was processed to add the highlights. He put all of the detail needed into the area the film could see. You might say he compressed the information to fit the media.

Today I still think of things he said when I take a photo. He said to pre-visualize what your final photo will look like. I think of the final product hanging on the wall when I look around me and suddenly "feel" a photograph. Yes, feel is correct. When I am on vacation traveling to a new city I just have to take photographs. I feel them inside of me. I then need to take my camera and look at what my eyes see and compress that into the restrictions of the frame and the exposure capabilities of the media to share that feeling with someone else. The process of making the photo is as rewarding as anything you can do but the best part is when someone else enjoys the work and feels the same thing I did.

Composition is the most critical part of capturing that feeling. Exposure is the second part. The challenge of photography is to take the light that exists in your world and put it onto paper or into the computer. http://www.scphoto.com tells a lot about that and shares much of what I have learned after 40 years taking pictures. My own personal web gallery at http://homepage.mac.com/keithwills46/Menu4.html shares some of the experience I have had in the past two years. Please feel free to view them and share with me your thoughts about them or about what it is about photography that interests you.