The digital camera has made a photographer of many people who may have thought they never had the talent to shoot beautiful images. It’s usually easy to use, light to carry, and you can take as many photos as you like. The addition of Photoshop has also almost certainly revolutionized photography, giving photographers and artists alike the chance to make the fine adjustments that provide the difference between a good photograph and a great one.
I know, for my part, using a camera is primarily meant to document: things the children are doing, happenings and events like birthdays and holidays, moments I want to capture. But I’ve never felt that I was a great photographer; even with the magic of digital cameras and the fine-tuning available via Photoshop, my photos are, at best, decent.
But nothing really compares to the photographs taken by someone who has the EYE for it. The unconscious ability to frame a scene, capture a movement or expression, pare away extraneous details; FOCUS. There are lots of people that I read daily who take wonderful photographs and who, thankfully, share them with the world via their websites. Photo sites can cause me to lose hours of my life, drunk on the beauty of the frozen instant, on shape or form or color or expression that, captured, is no longer fleeting, but severed from time and displayed for my pleasure.
My brother has the eye and sometimes shares his work, and so does my husband. This past weekend Anders took the kids to Skåne’s Djurpark, an outdoor zoo about 20 minutes north in Höör that houses and highlights animals from the Nordic region. He took only some 20 photos, mostly of the animals, with a few shots of the kids, but something about them captured me anew. These animals, unlike the ones in the great shots that ozswede posts on behalf of her husband, aren’t in the wild, but there is something magical about them, nonetheless. Maybe it’s just the winter light, but the vitality of them still grabs and leaves me breathless.
Take a look: Andersfoto.net (click on the Previous link under each picture to move through the photos, or choose the Browse link at the top to see all the thumbnails)
*title from a quote by Sam Abell