February 21, 2010
I like to think of myself as an artistic individual…that I lead an artistic life. By this point you all know that I dance for a living or rather am attempting to do so (artist point #1) and that I take pride in being a music snob (artist point #2). What you may not know is that I also like to dabble in the fine art of photography.
I don’t remember when I started taking photos but I do remember when I started thinking of it as an art form. It was my sophomore year of high school when I took my first photography class. It was such a cool class! Learning how to load the film into the camera; reading the light meter; developing and washing the film hoping to God you didn’t accidentally expose it to light; spending countless hours in the darkroom playing with exposure times. Ahh! SO COOL! Point and shoot cameras became a thing of the past, my new love became the single lens reflex. Even now, in the digital age, there will never be anything more intimate than working with a fully manual film camera.
But I digress.
My infatuation with photography was born. I asked for my own SLR for my birthday/Christmas present that year. Santa brought it to me. It was a happy day. However, after my photography class ended and I no longer had to turn prints in I ended up using the camera less and less…it’s the unfortunate side of being a busy teen.
A few years later I enrolled in a digital photography class. It was my senior year of high school and wanted to take one more “for fun” class. DSLRs (digital single lens reflexes) were still pretty new and very expensive and were therefore unavailable to us at school so most of us in the class used our own point and shoot digital cameras. Not only did we further explore the art of photography but we also learned how to use Photoshop. To this very day, I believe that this was one of those most useful things I learned in all of my schooling.
During the class I mainly focused on outdoor photography and grew to have a preference for it – as opposed to portrait or commercial photography. I still prefer landscape photography but now, with the purchase of my very own Canon Rebel XT, I’ve begun to explore other styles.
I’ve now arrived at one of my two points.
During the past two months I’ve begun to try my hand at concert photography, and I really like it. My first few outings were a little rusty due to having a slow lens (you want to have a fast lens in order to keep your subject in focus while also allowing enough light to expose the image). After learning this, I shopped around for a faster lens and am now producing clearer, more interesting photographs.
I still don’t shoot too often – limited funds play a huge part in that – but this weekend I decided to go to a show, have fun and take some pics. And I’m proud to say I took some great ones! The venue lighting had a lot to do with the awesomeness of the photos but I’d also like to think that I’m becoming more skilled at seeing the photograph before I take it. I don’t know.
I also took some photos for my friend Molly’s Etsy page (http://www.etsy.com/shop/petitedancer25) which got me thinking about maybe trying my hand at headshots. Not because I purposefully took headshots for her but some of them could work for that.
Now, to my second point.
I think I want to create a new website for myself. It would be an all-encompassing site featuring me as a dancer, teacher, choreographer, arts administrator, writer, and photographer. It would be a site dedicated to Lauren Baker, the artist.
