drive by snap

""Photographers have a way of describing a certain aspect of their photo image capture as shooting. I have not researched it, but I could associate the activity with viewing, aiming and squeezing the shutter button, in a fashion similar to a firearm user. Given the prominence of gun related crime in some of our communities, I feel it is safer for me to steer clear of shooting photos and resort to snapping photos instead. In the real world of photography, real photographers neither shoot photos nor snap photos, but create and make photographic images. But we no longer seem to live in the real wold of photography, therefore real photographers are seemingly ceasing to exist anymore.

These days everything is debatable, even cold hard unchangeable facts are debatable by certain "people" of our now generation. I would really like to know why they must always be right, more especially when they are wrong, and if you disagree, please be quiet because you could be shot at, then snapped by the crime scene unit. [possible ad content for: Get rid of cable]. These are some serious shooting and snapping times that we live in.

Recently I find that I am getting into an area of photography that has never been available to me before, that of "drive by shooting". I hope we are all on the same page here, because my shooting refer to the creating of photographs with a digital camera, and is in no way related to any use of a firearm. Shooting pictures is what photographers are still doing in these days. I was saying that 'drive by shooting" is rather interesting as it only gives me one chance of getting that once in a lifetime photo as I zip by in a motor vehicle, and I seem to have the hardware and maybe some of the ability to make it work for me. Of course if I don't catch a certain scenery on the first pass, maybe I will on another day. But no two days are alike and the lighting will most likely be different, creating a different mood for the photo.

When you are cruising down a country road at 40-miles per hour, the undulating and rolling scenery can never be the same ... it is significantly different to your standing in the middle of that cane field or pasture, or up on the hillside, with camera on tripod waiting for the light that you perceive will change, to change, and come to your rescue ... but instead a shower of rain blows over the hill behind you and proceed to drift across the flats. That has the makings of an award winning landscape ... but my drive by shooting landscape may be for a viewer with a different perspective, and appreciation.

Drive by shooting provides you another way of looking at images. Standing in front of a monument for 5-minutes to decide on camera setting and composition is one thing, but driving by the same monument gives you a once in a lifetime shot at capturing a unique image from a unique perspective. In the end it could come down to how quick are your reflexes, and if your camera can handle it. I can only speak for myself, and my camera, but you may be just as fortunate or maybe lucky, if you are not superstitious.

I have proven that my Canon EOS camera is able and capable of auto focusing as fast as I can think. The camera is smarter than I am, and I let it do what it does best, to expose and capture. Depending on my mood it is ISO 100 or 200, but ISO "auto" is a popular setting too. Shutter speed is set at 1/1500 or 1/2000 second and the custom feature "safety shit" is set to on. I do not think that 'safety shift' is a Custom Feature on the non professional Canon EOS cameras. When you are zipping by at 40-mph, you need to stop all movement dead in their tracks. Movement on certain subjects, by using a slow shutter speed, could be desirable, but in my case I wish viewers to see and appreciate the detail in the scenery.

Our visitors and tourists have the best opportunity to see and appreciate our islands in photographs from the back of their safari tour trucks. The trucks are slow enough and stable enough for great hand held photography. The only down side is that many visitors may not carry a digital single lens reflex type camera, but I am pretty sure that most of their point-and-shoots cameras can handle the photography they need. I plan to take our island tours in a safari truck myself, to see and photograph my island like a real tourist.""

17 February 2013

The preceding seven paragraphs was the introduction to an incomplete blog from late 2012. I can't recall why I abandoned my keyboard, because when I sit down to blog it is usually just one continuous action from start to finish, but I vaguely recall that something happened that made it compulsory to vacate my chair. It could have been something of national significance. Anyway that has passed, like everything else will, and we still on a path for  doomsday, and to make our life and living even more interesting, more people are getting on board and working to make history as the architects. What is for you is yours.

We live in a great photographic time. The science and technology of photography and all of its applications are so embedded into our psyche, that some of us dare not live without it. But that topic is for another blog, not mine. It is for who genuinely believe their words can fall on fertile minds. Purists always exist, but I think they are slowly expiring. It is the way of all life, and will ultimately pass.

I must apologize for the photo-less archives. It is Facebook. Like the youths of today I am right, and somebody has to be wrong. Facebook. Initially I uploaded images from my hard drives, then later for convenience, I stated linking to the Facebook images, ... then Facebook goes and change up everything. No problem, they have to fresh up design and layout, etc., it is their thing and we not paying for it, yet, so they stamp in your chest whenever they want to remind us who is boss. So I am back to the HD upload.

The Facebook multi image uploader is dead again. I use Chrome and found a fix for it last year, but that fix not good for 2013. But thanks to Google my Picasa3 uploader works perfectly, still. Some of us don't have a "plan B" to "plan F", but what do you do if one morning you awake to the fact that Facebook and flickr has been vaporized, does not exist anymore. It is highly unlikely, but just suppose. Can you go to a "plan B" or "plan C", and be good to go again. Just a little something to think about, because we live in some serious times where anything is possible, in the twinkling of an eye.

So I digress a bit from the DBS. I am Drive By Snapping, and it is solely a daytime activity. I would not want any para or near para person to mistake the camera pointing out the rear window of a car zipping by at 40-mph for anything else. Them people does see all kinds of things, real and otherwise. The security forces not para, but anyone's eyes and mind can play a trick on them, so we hope for the best.

I hear on the streets that we may soon have time when we can take pictures and more pictures of our favorite and not so favorite people, friends and even enemies. Given the proliferation of cameras in just about ever portable device imaginable, photos will be all over the place and the world. I hope that people acquaint themselves with the laws of the land as it pertains to photography, and I don't necessarily mean the people with the recording devices, called cameras, but the other people who could at some point in time see themselves as the victims.

I have noticed online that some of our graphic artists have great talent in applying the techniques of "Photoshop"  and I hope that the crime fighters are ready and prepared to handle any fallout when a member of the public screams out, because most times, where things begin is not there they does end, and we would not want any citizen[s] taking the law into their own hands, in the name of justice. St Kitts is no longer the place where you can say "that does not happen here".

Photography, in any way, shape or form, is very alive and well in SKN.