I Heart Photography #3 - The Random, Unexpectedly Wonderful Shot

Part of the wonders of dabbling one's dry feet in the cold waters of creative photography is that you sometimes don't know when or how you suddenly fall in and make a big splash. Most of the time, you just see transient ripples on the surface that fade away and disappear as quickly as they come. The only way to keep the water moving and active is to keep making many and frequent ripples. Sooner or later, or at least once in a while, that big splash will come.

This is more or less true for me. As an amateur self-taught photography hobbyist, I depend on experience and criticism to improve my technical skills and creative eye in preserving images. For the longest time, I had my camera with me at all times like a shark's remora, ready to pounce on that suddent moment of opportunistic feeding. In my case, my camera is there so that whenever I see something that is worth remembering and sharing with everyone I know, I have something ready to capture that moment and preserve it so that other people can see what I saw and maybe share the same feeling I had.

My used-to-be frequent random shots and sharing of photos on Flickr, Facebook and this blog has often created those transient ripples, but one shot in particular created my big splash for me. Though the nature of the splash is still transient, the impact was much much bigger, which is why this shot, though random and partially unplanned, remains one of my personal favorites and my most popular shot on Flickr.

Catch the Sun, by ihsankhairir

This shot was captured while I was waiting for a taxicab in Singapore, sometime May of 2009. I was struggling to find the correct exposure settings to capture both the sky and the silhouette of my hand when I suddenly had the inspiration to try to shoot the sun through the peephole in my hand. Because I tried to not overexpose the sky by using a smaller aperture in combination with the correct gap size and distance of the focal plane from my hand, I managed to create a sparkle with sufficiently many spokes. As I mentioned before, this was partially unplanned because I did not perform any prior calculations nor was I privy to such technical knowledge prior to this shot. It was a random and unexpectedly wonderful shot, one that I almost immediately dedicated to a special someone (that someone remained anonymous in the dedication).

Creating random and unexpectedly wonderful shots like the one above is one of the many reasons why I heart photography :)

How about you? Have you had any random, unplanned shots that become your big splash?

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Other articles in the I Heart Photography series:
I Heart Photography #1
I Heart Photography #2 - My History of Photography

I Heart Photography #2 - My history of photography

One thing I can tell you is that I never thought I'd be so interested in photography. I didn't know way back then that of all the hobbies I've tried - stamp and/or sticker collecting, model making, buffet eating, etc. - photography would be the most enjoyable and fulfilling. I didn't have the passion for this hobby until recently. It used to be that I like having pictures taken, then it evolved into enjoying taking other people's pictures, and consequently just random stuff around that people tend not to notice (which paved the way to my increasing interest in closeup, macro and still life).

I procured my first camera when I was 16, in 1999. I won the camera in the National Space Science Quiz competition held at the National Planetarium, Kuala Lumpur. It was an APS film camera, the Minolta Vectis GX-2.

photo taken from flickr

It was touted to be splashproof and durable, and I used it several times for my family excursions to the beach. The APS film format was supposedly next-gen towards the end of the nineties, but by early 2000s the format slowly dies out; phased out by the emerging market of digital photography.

The first camera that I bought by myself using my own money was a Sony Cybershot DSC-P71. It was large, heavy, noisy, and consumes battery power like a thirsty camel. I bought it sometime summer  2003, a few months after I got to the States for college.

photo credit: dpreview.com

For a 3.2 megapixel camera with limited features, it served me well for all my 4.5 years in the United States. Most of the pictures I took while I was in Michigan came from this trusty old camera. In fact, I used to be the pseudo-official photographer for the Muslim Students Association in the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, and all of the photos were from this camera. You can see the photos I took by going to this site:

http://www.muslims.studentorgs.umich.edu/

Go to About MSA > Gallery and it will take you to a Picasa web album site. The lower 50% of all the albums on the site (basically oldest photos on the site) were taken by me, between 2005 - 2006, using the clunky old P71.

Some of the pics I took back then. Photo credits: ihsankhairir

Alas, the old camera served me for a full five years before it died its slow death, finally one day refusing to turn on even after I served it with a set of fully charged double-As. The day it died, I felt a small pang of sadness, for I have had and made tons of memories with this camera, and the fact that I may never use it again for taking photos brought an end to a very meaningful and fulfilling run.

The death of the Sony DSC-P71 came shortly after I procured from a friend the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX12.

photo credit: digital-cameras-review.org

I took quite a number of pictures using this very compact and easy to use camera. I used it especially to explore my growing interest in closeup and macrophotography (of bugs, especially), as evidenced by the photos below.

photo credits: ihsankhairir

The Lumix was stolen at a McDonald's restaurant in Shah Alam, which to me was a devastating blow. During its short service it had helped me explore and produce some of my favorite closeups of bugs and insects, of which are all amateur-ish but passable in my book. Losing the camera meant I was without my shooting gear for a few months, until I procured my latest camera.

photo credit: kenrockwell.com

The Nikon D60. My first and only DSLR. I bought it a few days before leaving for a family vacation to Sabah in December 2008. For those who have been around my site, you have seen most of the photos I took using this camera, so there's no need to provide sample photos here. You know where to look. Most of the latest photos, in fact, most of my posts here feature at least one photo taken using this camera.

I guess that's a brief history of my involvement in photography as a hobby. It's a short insight into all the cameras I used to own and use and maybe a little bit of what I used to shoot back in the days before the D60.

For all my posts concerning photography, you can go here or click the label 'photography' found in the sidebar.

Before I go, I'd like to invite you, especially the photography hobbyists / amateurs / professionals, to give us an insight into your history of photography. I'm sure it would be enjoyable to share and learn each other's passions and inspirations as well as journey in preserving memories onto film / digital images.

"I heart photography!"

I Heart Photography #1

Today, after a whole dozen hours of driving myself to four different venues for a multitude of tasks that had somehow found itself piled together within one particular day, I decided take a break from the hectic three part-time jobs routine and take a walk down the memory gallery. I visited my long neglected Flickr site.

Ever since I've reached the limit of 200 photos in Flickr, I have ceased to upload any more of my photography works on the site even though I am much in love with the system. This act of cessation has caused me to almost forget that I in fact do have a Flickr site, and that I have put in there a lot of my amateur shots that were made over the past few years - some of them I am quite proud of, some of them just make me go 'bleh'. But they are, regardless of quality and visual impact, are true projections of my artistic vision, which I do admit is either in hiding or in need of serious help.

The ones I am proud of - they convey my honest look at aesthetics, and may represent in essence what I regard as 'beautiful'. I am almost always at lost whenever someone asks me to describe beauty. My lack of vocabulary hampers me from expressing my appreciation of visual aesthetics efficiently; so does my almost dead drawing skills. I find in photography the best way to communicate to the world what I find is beautiful and pleasant to the eyes, and so with that the passion for this hobby was ignited. The flame, luckily, after all this while, has not been extinguished yet, although it has gone to and fro between burning brightly and flickering dimly.

And so, friends, after reminiscing the memories that came with each old photo in my Flickr, I would like to share with you some shots of mine of which I am quite fond of, for it either captures the essence of what I find is beautiful, or it has a wonderful memory attached to it. So here goes, I hope, the first in a series of my sharing the passion I have for photography.

...

#1  ---  Jumping monkey



This picture was taken with a borrowed camera (a Fujifilm FinePix F10) a few years ago during a family day picnic at Morib Beach. I remember having so much fun with dear friends that day, and with that borrowed camera I have managed to bring home with me wonderful memories of friends who are now living so far away. Joining in the fun was a troop of monkeys, macaques in particular, who sneaked around the site scavenging for leftovers or unattended food. While most people chase away these primates, I instead hounded them for photos, like a paparazzo of monkeys of sorts, while these 'celebrity simians' try to find ways to elude my amateurish snaps.

It was during one of these chases that, late in the day, I finally got this one silhouette shot of a monkey jumping from the roof of a gazebo to a tree. It was a moment forever etched in my memory, for I remember watching in awe the macaques' agility and grace when they jumped from tree to gazebo to tree. I knew instantly that this was worth immortalizing in a photo, and so I waited for the right moment to shoot this picture, which you can see, has managed to a certain extent capture the skills of the monkey in jumping from one high point to another.

I am proud of this shot. The silhouette, the colors, the monkey jumping, all of it. Shots like this, though taken with an amateur eye and an amateur camera, make me say to myself:

"I heart photography."


I hope you like the photo as much as I enjoyed shooting it. ;)

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P/S: I am making this into a series, so this is just part one of I don't know how many!


P/P/S: Finally a non-invisible postscript!