Shutter lust...
/Sometimes someone new to photography asks me for advice. It's a lot like walking into a grocery store and asking, what tastes good here. Not an easy question since it's really self exploration that will help someone find what they love and as a result usually get good at that. To learn what tastes good (to you) in the store you have to try it...all. So, I usually suggest this.
Go to a place where you've been many times before and sit down and just start looking at it...really look. Developing the eye for interesting backgrounds, views, seeing how the light is playing through the trees on the side of a building, or how a path in a park is shaded by trees. All of these things we have seen and just take for granted in a literal sense and not in the artistic sense. The artistic lines in an old man's face, or the colorful and delicate pattern of the iris of a young girl's blue eye...
Just walk and look with your heart and not your head and you'll see a whole different world to shoot.
Don't look at the back of your camera either. Just shoot and keep your head up and eye looking for something interesting. While you might be looking at your pictures you are probably missing a moment in time, an elusive shot, that is lost forever. Shoot bracketed and you'll be fine.
Leave your technical self behind and just look at the world through your creative eye. Through your childish eye. And discover what's been there all along.
