Email PhotoBug at WoodJr@photobugblog.net or WoodSr@photobugblog.net. We’re always happy to hear suggestions for articles and answer questions!

[from Wood Jr]

My father gave me my first camera when I was around 7, I think. It was a wee little twin lens reflex, and I took a lot of pictures with it. I remember eagerly badgering my mother to get the film developed every time another roll was done. Then I would hastily look through all the pictures I had taken and completely forget about them as I set off to take more pictures.

In the 20-30 years since then, I have continued taking pictures, upgrading my equipment from time to time. From twin lends to single lens reflex, from Minolta to Nikon, from film to digital, and eventually collecting multiple lenses, and lights, and reflectors. I took photography courses at college, took photos for work, and when working in marketing I chose and bought stock photography for our print ads.

In all that time I’ve learned a little bit about how to take a good shot, a lot more about when not to press the shutter release, a little about lighting and composition and a lot about how to use my equipment. I’ve also worked with lots of other photography enthusiasts. I think of all the things I’ve learned one of the most important was about how you learn photography.

I learned that you cannot be taught how to take great photographs.

Any book, any course, any great photographer that promises to make you a great photographer is telling you a lie. Every rule of composition, of color, of lighting, of all the little things that make a photograph great have dozens and hundreds of stunning photos that prove the exceptions to the rules. Great photographers have an instinct, a unique vision that cannot be taught.

What can be taught is how to use your equipment. How to set your exposure, your white balance, control your depth of field, how to use lights and the difference between qualities of light and how the eye reacts to different elements of a photo.

What can be taught are the skills of a photographer, the science of photography. So as you develop your talent, your vision as a photographer, you’re able to capture that vision when you press the shutter.

Our goal with PhotoBug is to lay out all the basic skills and techniques and definitions of the photographer’s toolbox. And then we’re going to dig out our cameras and experiment with these concepts. We’ll take an idea for a shoot and try it several different ways and see what works and what doesn’t and examine why one way works better than another.

Well, that and the real goal, which of course is to take a lot of photos and have a lot of fun taking them. Because that is, after all, the whole point.