Why Photography?

As I was browsing through old photographs I think it is this photo above, from August 2005, where I can first remember that I was thinking about what I was doing. It wasn’t a snap shot and the camera wasn’t on “Auto”. It is a view across Tremadoc Bay from Harlech towards Abersoch. It was taken on a Sony P200 Digital Camera and I think I’d manually changed the white balance to “cloudy” and adjusted the exposure compensation. I don’t think this was the moment I fell in love with photography, but it was the first time I tried to “craft” a better image.

It was the science and the technical nature of photography that I first really enjoyed. I’m a scientist at heart and when I was starting out I enjoyed learning about the exposure triangle and how shutter speed, aperture and iso interact to create an image. I liked that photography gave me the opportunity to be creative but that this creativity was still bounded by the physical properties of light and exposure. Limits can enhance creativity rather than reduce it. Today I much prefer shooting with a fixed focal length rather than using zooms. Setting myself a limit improves my creativity and the quality of the images I take.