Today, David posted on pixelatedimage.com another post on vision, and how hard it can be to take pictures. I get it this time. The last time he really went off about this: A Long Way to Go: A Rant, I kind of went off on him. (I even managed to pull Matt Brandon in on my rant-back) I was off the mark then. Way off.

At that time my picture taking was improving quite a bit. By improving, I mean that I was getting more shots in focus, with the DoF I wanted, with reasonable composition. I understood my camera, and could usually get it to technically do what I wanted. I was frustrated by a few things about my D40, and wanting a D90 pretty badly.

I went off on David that taking photographs really wasn’t that hard, especially if you had all the gear like he and Matt did. After all, I had only had my camera for a year, and my pictures were getting technically better quite quickly.

What I completely missed, was that David was talking about how hard it was to take a picture that represented the vision you had for the picture. I was just talking about getting the thing in focus. I wasn’t trying to get a representation of my vision out of my photography. I just walked around and took pictures of things that caught my eye.

Recently though, I have been trying to capture something more particular from my pictures. A particular mood or feeling that I saw or felt when I took the picture that I wanted to share. That is much harder. That, I am finding frustrating. Whether it is at point of click, or later in photo shop, I am finding that I just don’t have the chops yet to get what I want, when I want it. Sometimes it comes out, but it seems more like luck.

Now I get it. I have a bit more gear now than I had then. That, combined with practice is producing technically better shots more often. But now I move into the more difficult phase. How do I get an expressive photo, not just a sharp one?

PS. Thanks to David and Matt for giving me time to come around.