and why I'm here.
I'm a self-taught photographer. (Isn't everybody?) Probably. In fact, as I develop this site, my own philosophy about how we learn, why we learn, and how much of what we do or think we know is based quite a lot on our self talk that goes on within our brains. The 'teacher' we listen to most, for good or for ill, happens to be ourselves. Coach that teacher to become a better teacher, and the student, still ourselves, can benefit immensely.
I'm not going to introduce much about my specialities at this time. If you've read this far, you may be curious, or you could be a photographer yourself, or perhaps you are a friend or acquaintance who wants to be nice and say you actually read my post.
If you want to know a bit about my photography, feel free to check out the first of a series of three articles published about me in relation to photographing storms over on Topaz Labs' blog. When you're ready to read that, here's the link to the series: http://blog.topazlabs.com/jeff-mcpheeters/
If you're curious to see more than read, you can find my Instagram feed at https://www.instagram.com/macalterego/ and if anything there suits your fancy, I'm happy to share the journey with you.
Did I mention I'm a historian? Self-taught really. Well it was a minor in college but I'm leading you to my thought that we're all by nature, historians.
"All living beings have their own evolution and their own life span. But human beings are the only living beings who know that they live while they live -- who know, and not only instinctively feel, that they are going to die. Other living beings have an often extraordinary and accurate sense of time. But we have a sense of our history, which amounts to something else. Scientific knowledge, dependent as it is on a scientific method, is by its nature open to question. The existence of historical knowledge, the inevitable presence of the past in our minds, is not. We are all historians by nature, while we are scientists only by choice." ~John Lukacs, Remembered Past, on History, Historians, and Historical Knowledge, ISI Books, www.isibooks.org, 2005.
My own interaction with the remembered past has implications sometimes profound and at most times, perhaps, diffuse, is terms of the way I compose and interpret a scene, a portrait, or even the decisive moment recorded in a photograph or series of photographs. Some photographs illustrate the split second timing that determines, often enough, success or failure in making a photograph worth keeping let alone publishing. Most aren't that momentus. They are more like a portrait of a person you may or may not be familiar with but whose gaze and countenance give you pause and beg a question or two.... what just happened.... what may be about to happen.... what mood is it and does it portend a story of my own imagination or one that seems obvious from clues within when combined with my own experiences and historical knowledge of something similar, something familiar to my recollections?
Perhaps that's the question I'll leave you with here in this rough beginning. Sometimes it's enough to just stand and gaze and wonder. Sometimes there is nothing more that needs to be said or recorded. We simply see, observe, take in what we can, remember in our own way, and we're never quite the same again.
(composed and written while listening to Caledon Wood, by Al Petteway, https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/caledon-wood/36138816)
Hello @macalterego! Welcome to this wonderful community! You'll meet great people here... Write freely and keep steeming :)
Hi there on Steemit! I'm also a self-taught photographer, and also a newbie here. I really love the first picture of the storm, is it a composite or only long exposure (and how long? :D). See you around!
It's what Olympus cameras call Live Composite; it is useful for many kinds of photography such as lightning, fireworks, etc. It makes one image but it's a long exposure that collects individual sub-exposures so that the light doesn't over expose, using an electronic shutter to basically make multiple exposures all stacked and blended into a single image file. This was 30 seconds long and taking six second exposures so that each time the lightning flashed, it only records pixels brighter than those in the underlying frames. Hard to explain unless you understand how to blend layers in Photoshop in Lighten mode, then it all makes sense.
yeah, I know PS well and I got a chance to use live composite on an olympus camera some months ago. I did some storm photos attempts in the past, but I only used long exposure and continuous mode to take 10+ seconds frames.
Thanks! Looking forward to the experience. Already seeing some really great posts and writers here.
Welcome to steemit @macalterego. Join @minnowsupport project for more help. Checkout @helpie and @qurator projects.
Send SBD/STEEM to @treeplanter to plant trees and get an get an upvote in exchange of your donation (Min 0.01 SDB)
Upvote this comment to keep helping more new steemians
Send SBD/STEEM to @tuanis in exchange of an upvote and support this project, follow for random votes.
Steemit is where all the hip kids meet. Whole lotta great artists, photograpers, writers here. You will enjoy it I am sure. There are lots of photo contests and challenges to use to start to get your photos seen and gain followers and a little SBD. Follow @photocontests for one of the big ones.
Hi @macalterego! You have received 0.4 SBD @tipU upvote
from @armadilloman !
@tipU pays 100% profit + 50% curation rewards to all investors and allows to automatically reinvest selected part of the payout.
Hi. My name is @shauntaemonte or Aaron in real life and I'm still pretty new too and finding my way. But I wanted to give you an up-vote and say hi. One thing to know if you're serious about this is being active with posts and comments and building your own little community of followers and people of similar interests. I invite you to follow me and visit my blog page. Up-vote if you like and I'll keep an eye out for you.
https://steemit.com/landscapephotography/@shauntaemonte/motocross-fairy-chimneys
https://steemit.com/architecturalphotography/@shauntaemonte/hagia-sophia-holy-wisdom-istanbul-turkey
https://steemit.com/cityscapephotography/@shauntaemonte/homeless-in-los-angeles
https://steemit.com/landscapephotography/@shauntaemonte/rugged-and-rewarding
https://steemit.com/landscapephotography/@shauntaemonte/tears-along-the-navajo-trail
https://steemit.com/sportsphotography/@shauntaemonte/wcmx-wheel-chair-motocross
Kindly, if you follow, up-vote, or resteem me, please make a comment so I know. And why. That way I know if I'm sharing things of interest to the community and also I can repay you in-kind for doing so.
Thank you,
https://steemit.com/@shauntaemonte
https://www.spohnranch.com/bio/aaron-spohn/
Congratulations @macalterego! You received a personal award!
You can view your badges on your Steem Board and compare to others on the Steem Ranking
Vote for @Steemitboard as a witness to get one more award and increased upvotes!