Photography Advice

I hope I'm not one of those guys who make comments like, Everyone is a photographer now. Or someone who sarcastically comments that if you have a DSLR, sure, you''re a pro. Because I look back on how I started in photography and realize that in some ways the only difference between me and the newbies is that when I started, I had to load film in the back of my camera.

I became serious about my photography in 1999 when I bought a Canon Rebel. Before that, I used an old 110 camera or disposables I'd buy in grocery stores. I went out into the world not knowing much about photography. Admittedly, I kept the camera on Auto for way too long. I was afraid of messing up. I went to some online forums and it seemed a lot of photographers were talking about how hard shooting was. They scared me away from slide film with their talk about aperture and shutter speeds and something they called ASA.

But one thing I had going for me was a knack for composition. So for a while I was content with shooting on Auto and getting decent results more time than not. I shot mostly trains then. And I had fun with it. I went to small Carolina and Georgia towns that I would normally not even know about if it weren't for searching online for railroads. Places like Laurinburg, NC, Laurens, SC, Lavonia, Georgia. Then there was Hamlet, NC which aside from being the birth place of John Coltrane is a large rail yard for CSX. I drove to Memphis and Colorado and took a lot of pictures.

But I knew there was more to photography than pointing the camera and pushing the shutter. This was apparent when the camera chose unwisely and I'd have trains blurred or out of focus. So finely I began wading into shooting on something other than full auto. I waded slowly. I'd choose the aperture and let the camera set the shutter speed. I bought books. I asked online forums for help. It still seemed daunting though. It seemed everything I read and everyone I talked to told me how hard photography was.

Now fast forward to 2012 and photography is fun. It's not hard. Not really. But it seems like some people want you to think it is. So they tell you how hard it is in forums or they make sarcastic comments about wannabes buying DSLRs. That's why I try to be helpful on the Railpictures forums. Because I didn't get a lot of that.

So my advice to photographers just starting out is this --

-- Have fun with it.
-- Enjoy your mistakes. You will make a lot of them. But learn from the mistakes, too.
-- Quickly turn off the full auto. Learn what aperture means. Read your manual. Buy a photography book. (Not one called ¡§Photography for dummies.¨) Browse the internet for good photography and photographers.
-- And practice patience. Don¡¦t expect to be great the first year.
-- But most importantly, have fun!