Tag Archives: elephant

It’s all about giving and taking

Hi everybody,

Last week I told you a bit more about my sleepy vervet monkey shot. This week, I want to share some thoughts on sharing. In photography, sharing can take different forms and serve different purposes, yet what it all boils down to is that there should be a balance between giving and taking.

Let me use the Wild Eye gallery and monthly competition an example.  They are a great platform for sharing, exchanging, learning, inspiration, … And that also goes for the competition, since getting selected is great, yet the proverbial participation is better. Since even when your images don’t make it, that doesn’t mean they are bad images, it just means they connected less to the mood of the jury at that point in time. Yet thinking about your submissions, seeing what others submit and learning from the judges in the end all boils down to giving and taking. You take, by getting inspired (by looking at the competition, which is getting stiffer by the month b.t.w.), by exposing your work, yet you can also give, by providing feedback to the work of others, or by creating exposure for them. Honestly, how cool is it when a 13 year old gets in touch with you and asks you to go through her pictures to provide some feedback, isn’t that what it’s all about?! A small effort from your side that can give somebody else just that little push which is needed, isn’t that great? I can tell you it made my day!

Canon 350D, Canon 75-300 @ 300mm, 1/500, f/8, ISO 200

Some of the sites I’ve been checking out to share my work include 1x and 500px. Some time ago, I was still wondering whether I liked 1x or not. By now I can tell you I don’t, since in my opinion, you do not want to be at the mercy of a curator when you want to create exposure for your messages. If (s)he doesn’t like your style, you will end up spending a lot of time in uploading pictures without any result, besides getting frustrated, or worse, moving away from your own style in trying to please the curator. Don’t go there, go for 500px instead, the quality of the work and the interaction with other photographers is great. And for those who use Lightroom, sharing has just been made easier, since you can post from Lightroom directly. And while you’re at it, you can do the same for Facebook and a bunch of other social media.

Another way of sharing I have just been exploring is Pinterest, you can check it out here and I would love to hear what you think about it. What I like about it, is that it allows you to gather a nice collection of work you like from across the web. Where I am not sure about it, is whether it gives sufficient credit to the photographer (not everybody mentions the photographer as I do), … I still havn’t made up my mind on this one. Have you tried it? Has it worked for you?

To finalize, let me share 2 inspiring wildlife and nature photography sites I came across recently, by Andrew Aveley and Isak Pretorius.

Enough for this week, look for quality interactions, share what you like, enjoy what you are doing and take it from there.

Warm regards,

Guy

PS: I have added an archives tab in the right hand column of the site to facilitate navigation amongst older blog posts.

 

 

A time to thank

Dear all,

First of all,I would like to thank Gerry van der Walt from Wild Eye for the very nice guest post he did, sharing his photographic journey and highlighting the importance to interact with other photographers online and in real life. Please also check out this post on the Wild Eye site, which I see as a nice follow up to the post done on Pics from the Wild (and that storm picture, what a stunner!). More to come from the Wild Eye people in the future!

Secondly, you may have noticed the Pics from the Wild logo popping up on Twitter and the facebook page. I still have to intgrate it here, yet I want to thank Mark Timmermans, a great friend of mine and a graphic designer with a passion for photography. Check out his site here, some great stuff to be found there (and somewhere in the near future, Mark will do a guest blog, looking forward to that one already).

Last but not least, I would like to thank those of you who shared some nice words or liked the facebook page (29 people whom I knew before or whom I’m getting to know now), it’s a nice boost to keep on doing this, thanks and please feel free to keep on sharing with others who might be interested. Not that this recognition is needed, yet it does help. This being said, I started asking myself what drives me then to do this, there is of course the element of sharing with others, sharing the beauty of nature, yet as I went along, another reason also came up: inspiration! By writing these blogs, by going through my old pictures (so much to learn from them, a fresh look on older work) and by exchanging/interacting with others (in the context of working on the Pics from the Wild logo f.e.), I have to push myself and I get inspired: things I want to tell jump to my mind, and so do pictures I want to go and get.

Canon 350D, Canon 75-300 @ 190mm, 1/500, f/9, ISO 200

Talking about pictures I want to go and get, I’ve raised some questions related to this on the facebook page, I would love to hear from you, so if you have 5 minutes to spare, please be my guest? And finally, please do take a look at my pictures on 500px, I will regularly add some pictures there as well, including some non wildlife work. I will keep you posted through twitter and facebook, please take a look and like the pics (that is, only if you really do like them)

Never give up,

Guy