Vol.2(3)

I read from Friedman's "The World Is Flat" that the Internet flattens the World and enables individuals to create their own virtual contents and new kinds of business. It is certainly true to certain extent, as I have just come across Google AdSense. Business is itself a morphing monster, actively changing its form while rampaging through villages to snatch their gold and virgins. Please don't take this description so literally as it bestowed a negative image upon people making business. They are just norms, being tiny magnets oriented to the magnetic north - i.e. gold and virgins.

I myself don't have the business wits, nor the desire to take the challenge. Being a blog of words instead of pictures, the probability of people attracted to it will surely hit the rock bottom. I do realize it. In an effort to advertise my blog, I promise I will post more and more pictures of, quite pretty faces, as well as information that might be useful for some people.

To start, I will tell my experience on transforming into a more serious photographer (definitely not a pro, just a hobbyist). It all started when I owned the first camera, a slim snapshooter Konica-Minolta, and brought her along to Germany for a 5-week immersion program three years ago. I learn things with purpose. My purpose of photographying is to explore the beauty of visual sense by means other than drawing or scupture, of which I am no good at all. Now I have my baby EOS Kiss X Digital (Canon 400D) with 18-55mm kit lens and the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8. Since then, I have yet taken any satisfied photo. Photography involves certain technicalities as well as the visual sense. Using a snapshooter, I could afford total focus on the composition, though that might not be good enough for a complete photo. But at least, my expression is there. However, with the EOS, my neurons were congested with so many other considerations every time before I could press the shutter.

Understanding the operation of an dSLR is simple. With a fixed lens, there are basically only three degrees of freedom, i.e. aperture, shutter speed, and ISO, in order of decreasing significance. Aperture not only determines the brightness, but the depth of field of the scene. Two extreme examples of DOF is the hyperfocusing of an object in front of you and a mountain at infinity, and also the blurring of background when taking portrait. Shutter speed is related to capturing fast-moving objects (of which I have yet to encounter), and lit-up city landmarks at night, while ISO is only tempered with under low-light condition. Compact-cam users may wonder what's the difference between a dSLR and the PowerShot series, which offer both aperture and shutter priority. Well, dSLR produces better quality photo with its larger sensor, besides being adaptable to different lens with focal length range from 10mm to say 300mm, while at the same time, extending the aperture to as large as f/1.4. Simple enough?!

Of course, there are more about photography than the stuffs above. Different filters, composition, lightning, macro, flash techniques for night trail, post-processing, photojournalism-style, etc. It's a definitely life-long learning process. Happy learning^^