Title • Photo Friday: Emptiness

Update: I’m really pleased to be able to say that this picture got awarded a noteworthy in the Photo Friday challenge – Emptiness. So many thanks to everyone who voted for this image. And if you’ve got the time (or inclination) you could always add me to your favourites at photoblogs.org :-)

<edit> A few times in recent months the weekly Photo Friday challenge has come around and something I’ve posted only a few days previously has been ideal – but I’ve resisted the urge to use it and have either taken something else, or used a photograph from my archive. But this time I’ve decided to break my own rule and use the image that I posted yesterday, a) because it’s only around twelve hours since I took it, and b) because I really think that it fits this week’s theme – Emptiness. </edit>

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks worrying about things like resolution (or the lack of it) and the problems of trying to take good photographs with anything less than a DSLR, and finally realised today that my worrying has nothing to do with what constitutes good photography. Sure, without a 1Ds (or other camera with a massive resolution and lenses to match) I’m not going to produce landscapes that rival an Ansel Adams (but then I strongly suspect that even with an 8x10 plate camera and all the time in the world I wouldn’t get close anyway), but that shouldn’t be an issue. Taking good photographs isn’t only/even about resolution (though it obviously helps) ...

Anyway, today I remembered that photography is about vision, and imagination, and capturing the world in a way that you might not normally see – so I decided to stop worrying about the technical limitations of my camera and start taking more pictures. I also decided that I’m going to try and concentrate a bit more on the form of my images rather than their content. So, today’s effort is a move in that direction – a simple (perhaps overly simple) exploration of light and shape. And for anyone who’s interested: it’s a shot of an uplighter (about 14 inches diameter) with minimal post-processing and no colour correction.

Incidentally, I finally got around to sorting out my links to other sites. For months I’ve been collecting bookmarks but haven’t incorporated them on this site, nor have I voted for them at photoblogs.org – I’ve now done both. You can see which sites I visit in the dropdown menu in the sidebar of this page.