Where I'm At !

When I first started taking photographs in my early teens, it was of anything ! with no particular skill or technique involved at all. Just point and shoot and waste A LOT of film. This proved to be an expensive pass time, even if you don't count the rolls I buggered up by contaminating with light whilst loading or unloading and the ones that got lost and never developed. However, one thing it did do was teach me the very basics of using a camera.
Shutter speed, ISO/ASA aperture, filters. And for this I am truly thankful. People now go straight through to digital, and happily blast away with auto mode and fill terabytes of disk space up with images. Which makes it all to tempting to never turn that selection dial of that big green A setting.
Now let me make this clear..there is nothing at all wrong with that and for a good few years that's what I did.

This is the earliest of my digital images, check out that straight horizon and excellent focus !

Then, I started looking at images on line that others were taking. And I suddenly found that need to reawaken the sleepy skills concerning shutter speed, and aperture and improve on the general dross I was taking. And eventually I found my way into off camera lighting or Strobist work.

I love the control that using speedlights (Flashes/strobes) can give you when used off camera, and paired with my improved skill of composition (like getting level horizons) I am much much happier with the shots I'm producing.

In this shot of my little monsters, I used a single off camera flash to fill the shadows of the harsh sun.
Simple but very effective

So at the minute, I'm really enjoying my strobist experimentation, the results of which you can see here . So what I'm getting at with this post is that if you want to get past the "Cute pony" aspect of photography then don't be afraid to experiment, that's how you learn new techniques and develop your own stlye. I'm Glad I did it and I'm much happier with my images because of it.