About pictures

I was web surfing earlier this week and ran across some web sites with incredible nature photos. First, there's Nature Photographers Online Magazine. There's some very nice stuff there. That web site led me to PhotoPortfolios.net, which has some absolutely stunning pictures. On that site, Wayne Simpson has some breathtaking photos. I'll have to stop mentioning other photo web sites now because I've run out of superlatives. Anyway, I spent a couple of hours looking through all of the gorgeous pictures and went to bed depressed because I have nothing that comes even close to those pictures.

I thought about it all week.

I've decided that, all things considered, my pictures are good enough.

All of what things? First of all, the people that post those fantastic pictures are professional photographers. They do things like find a good place to take a picture, and then go to that place time after time until conditions are perfect for the picture they want. They spend many thousands of dollars on lots of heavy equipment. They work constantly to hone their skills. Their objective is a photo that expresses an idea or tells a story.

I'm an opportunistic photographer. I wander around and if I see something I like, I take a picture. Rarely do I go back under better conditions, and never looking for perfect lighting, etc. The camera that I use most now is as heavy a camera as I want hanging around my neck as I hike through the desert, and it has to hang around my neck because I'm not going to spend time getting a camera out of a backpack to snap a picture. I tell my stories in my blog; the pictures are just part of the story. I take them to show where I was and what I saw. They are documentation, not works of art.

My pictures show what I want them to show, and a few of them even look good. They may not hold a candle to the professional's results, but I'm comfortable with them. That's all that counts.