Springtime Watercolor Photographs

 

An old red barn sits comfortably on a hillside as spring arrives.

On a spring day like today, a nature photographer might search for how to take pictures in a new and different way.

It's not that nature isn't offering up some spectacular images. They are right there before you almost everywhere you turn, but photography involves a little more than acting like a monkey pushing a button. More thought has to go into it if you wish to express a creative vision.

One of my favorite ways to implement different photographic options on my Sony RX10 iii is the watercolor picture effect. It transforms you instantly into a watercolor artist. All you bring is your sense of composition and design and your knowledge of what you want a picture to look like.

These are not insignificant things.

A fishing pier reaches out into
the lake under a soft spring sky.

Without them, you have nothing, no matter how great your technology is. Cameras are so good today that many think all you have to do is shell out ten or twenty thousand dollars and you're a photographer.

Wrong.

I recall a time many years ago when I was working as a sports photographer. I went to take pictures at a swim meet with my little Mamiya 35mm film camera that cost $125 and a 135mm f3.5 lens that I bought for $35. Up above me on the balcony overlooking the pool was a new photographer I hadn't see before. He sported a ten-thousand-dollar Leica camera and a 300mm f2.8 lens of equal value.

He held twenty thousand dollars worth of equipment in his hands over the chlorinated waters of that pool.

I envied him, but he might as well have dropped that equipment into the drink.

 Aside from shooting the meet from the wrong place, it was obvious he had no clue what he was doing. I was beside the pool as the swimmers went by and walked along with them as they swam.

The results were predictable.

The major metropolitan newspaper that hired him had to print the photographs he took. I guess they thought if he paid that much money for his Leica equipment their use of his terrible photographs was justified. The pictures were execrable. They were blurry, poorly composed and totally amateurish.

It was an embarrassment to see them on the front page of the sports section. 

They were smudges on the art.

The few photographs I took captured the swimmers adequately. Several were good.

I learned a valuable lesson that day that most of you probably already know: the photographer is his own most valuable piece of equipment.

So back to the watercolors.

A decaying stump is surrounded by dandelions,
new and old.

The technology available to you on a modern camera doesn't mean much if you don't use solid photographic techniques. Those techniques have been around for many years and don't change.

Add your vision and knowledge of your subject to your technique and you might produce something fine.

If you're a purist and wish photographs to look simply realistic in all cases, that's fine.

In that case, forego an adventure using watercolors to take pictures.

It's up to you. Your judgment is what counts.

Just make sure to use it.

Walk your own photographic trail.