In 1966 Jens Otto Kragh, the Danish prime minister at the
time, said, “I have a stand until I take a new one.” For a politician, that is either
a very smart comment or a death knell, depending on the situation. But it is a
comment I can relate to in my personal life. Times change, and as a result my perspective
changes, too.
I held on to my 35 mm SLR camera for the longest time after
digital photography became the norm. When I finally got my first DSLR camera in
2008, I was very adamant about not manipulating my digital photos in any way.
The image was what my eye saw, for better or for worse. Gradually I discovered
that if I lightened or darkened an image slightly, I could use the photo instead of having to delete it. Or if I cropped out that distracting branch at the side, the landscape photo
became balanced. I don’t think I will ever go so far as to remove a drainpipe
from a building, change the colour of the siding, and add a flowering bush like
the instructor of a class I took once showed us he had done. Granted, the final
image was lovely, but that building does not exist anywhere in real life. He
had created an image based on a real building, and if that was his intention,
then he did a good job. But he could no longer say, “if you walk down this street
in Athens you will find this building.”
When photographing moving water, whether a creek, a river,
or a waterfall, I always liked to portray the water as I see it. The softness
of a long-exposure water image was something I had never tried or even wanted
to do until last week on a hike along Cat Creek in K-Country with
my family. But retirement has changed my photography perspective slightly from always
depicting the real thing to adding an artistic flair in certain images. When we
reached a small waterfall at the end of the trail, I thought to myself, “I want
to try this long exposure thing for a change.” The result is what you see below.
I am really quite happy with that image, and I’m sure it’s not the last time I
try long exposure on water.
Lifelong learning is all about stepping out of one's comfort zone
and not being afraid to try something new… and times change.
