In 2022, I became a photographer. The journey began in June and by December I was accepting money for pictures. It was necessary to volunteer without permission, give away thousands of photos until enough people saw the quality of the work to ask for it.
Sure, I dabbled with cameras before, I helped shoot documentary, but I never focused on photography with my own professional grade camera, a Panasonic G-85, until six months ago.
There are a lot of technical things I’m just starting to understand. Aperture, ISO, white balance, shutter speed, f-stop: Changing any of these can get very different results and sometimes they seem to do the same thing. Although I need to study the mechanics of all that, I have learned to adjust on the fly until I’m happy.
One of the accelerators for that learning was that the camera came with a 28-70mm Tokina AT-X lens with manual aperture, made for Nikon. The mismatched lens is trickier because modern lenses are electronic, and the camera needs data to interpret for autofocus and other computerized functions.
Eventually, I ordered a Panasonic lens, an entry level 45-150mm, but none of these photos employed it. This lens provides me pull access to the camera’s features, though it’s an entry level lens, it is electronically matched and that helps. However, all of these were taken with the Nikon lens.
Then there is editing. Rarely is a photo taken so well on a digital camera that the image can’t benefit from digital enhancements. I just use Apple photos. I have Gimp for graphic work, but I didn’t use it for these.
Please pay attention to the caption and descriptions as they provide a tiny bit of context for each image.
By the way, the excuse I gave myself to buy the camera was for product photography for Held Gear. None of that is included here. Please visit my business at heldgear.com to see those images.
These are free to download and share. I practice value for value if you find something of value in here, please spread the wealth.
