Extending My Writing Goals to Photography

When I’m not working, writing, or studying, I’m (ideally) shooting. I was a landscape photographer and by shooting I mean “taking photos of.” One of the things I struggled with in 2014 was my motivation to shoot more. I’ve always had a small inkling in the back of my mind that I’d like to live out a career at my desk writing and taking photos. With my start to writing underway (and so far going relatively smoothly), the next half of that is creating more photos.

A lot of photographers will tell you that the gear doesn’t make the photographer. While I find that to be true, the gear does make the photographer more motivated if the gear they just bought is exponentially better than what they used to own. See, up until the end of last year, I owned a four year old camera body—the Canon 60D—and a couple of lenses. Unfortunately, the 60D wasn’t the best for landscape photography for two reasons:

Crop-Sensor: While create for getting extra range when using a telephoto lens, the smaller sensor leads to more noise on the image because each individual pixel is much smaller. This became unbearable at a larger print sizes, which I love doing. I have a 30×20” photo in my dining room I took at Mt. Rainier that I would love to re-shoot with my new equipment. I know I’d get much better results.

Lens Selection: While I could pick out awesome, expensive glass, it wouldn’t be worth it. With a crop sensor body, I’d have to multiply the focal length of the lens by 1.6, which takes an amazing landscape photography lens such as the Canon 16-35mm and turns it into a 25.6-56mm lens. While that sounds nice, that’s a bit too narrow for me. So I settled with a 3rd-party brand lens that gave me 10-20mm of range, which equated to 16-36mm, exactly where I wanted, but with a trade-off. It wasn’t super sharp.

With those two elements combined, I had a setup that I didn’t really appreciate so I stopped using it a lot. When I had the opportunity to replace my gear, I jumped on the idea, and ordered a new body—the Canon 6D—and the Canon 16-35mm F/4 lens. For what I want to shoot, it’s an amazing combination and so far I’ve had nothing but awesome luck and experiences with the combination. The setup is light and agile but not flimsy. The field of view is spectacular and the quality of imagery on the sharpness and clarity fronts are epic. Well worth the purchase.

For those who say that new gear won’t help you take better photos, they might be wrong if the old gear was of retiring age.

When it comes to actually taking photos, however, there’s no amount of gear that will make me get out and shoot. I have to want to. With the gear half of my desire out of the way, all I have left is myself to fight with. For 2015, I’m attempting to apply the same goals I set up for my writing to my photography and have broken them down as such:

Shoot at least twice a week

Different locations each time, not coming back for at least a month

Share at least one image from each shoot.

Stay at the location for as long as I deem necessary so as to not feel rushed.

Start taking my camera more places, intentionally, in case an opportunity appears.

These are rougher goals and guidelines than what I established for my wordsmith self, and that’s ok. I have a running list of places I want to shoot and each location requires different coordination in terms of time of day, weather, how long I’m there, how long it takes to get to my final destination, etc. I can’t reasonably expect it to take an hour to shoot at a beach at sunset and take the same amount of time while I hike two miles each way to a waterfall while raining. That’s unrealistic.

I think a lot of my shooting will end up on the weekends, as during the week, I am working a day job so my possible options will typically be limited to sunsets and night-time photography such as shooting the stars. I’m all right with that. I shoot over the weekend while I was in California and got some great photos. After work yesterday, I ran out and shot a sunset at the beach and got more great photos. I could have just as easily stayed home after work because I was certainly tired, but I knew that it wouldn’t take that long, and I really just need to do it and stop complaining.

If I ever want to make this something I do more regularly and possibly make money from, I need to work at it more. Same with writing. If I ever want to make something of it, I need to keep at it. No one becomes famous overnight (unless you go viral on the Internet, but even then that’s not really fame).