I got into photography just after high school. While I'd taken some decent pictures as a teenager with my father's old 35mm, I never studied the art until I purchased a Canon Rebel X in the summer of 1995. With the camera and 75-300mm lense, I set out to begin a career in wildlife photography and portraiture. I have been a photographer for the Columbus Messenger Newspapers since the summer of 1999.

Photography is one of those fields where you have to learn from your mistakes. I think the best way to take good pictures is to just go and and take pictures; when the images are developed, you can see the results of your work and try to modify your habits to get the takes you're hoping for. I can't even begin to estimate the number of rolls of film I wasted as I learned the art--how many times did I snap off a dozen shots of the same scene just to make sure I got the image I wanted only to find that I had taken 12 lousy pictures?

There are some things to keep in mind when you buy a camera. First, buy an SLR (single-lense reflex) camera. SLRs are the mainstream of professional photography. Even if you don't intend on being professional, you'll want an SLR. In the past non-professionals may have legitimately claimed that SLRs are more complicated than standard point-and-shoot cameras. Today, the argument doesn't hold because modern SLRs have a fully-automatic function. SLRs can be more complex than point-and-shoot cameras, but they are only complex for those who want to learn the intricacies of photography.

The first reason you want an SLR is because it allows you to see the image you are taking through the lense taking that picture. Most point-and-shoot cameras have two lenses--one for the viewfinder and one for the film. You cannot be certain that the image you see is the image you will get.

The second reason is that SLRs give you much more control over an image. Controlling exposure values is integral to getting a good picture. A point-and-shoot analyzes a picture and decides to find a value that is fine for the average color and light of a scene. But the average is usually not what you want, especially if there are high contrast levels. A scene with a lot of harsh light and deep shadows will probably be too contrasty with the average settings. SLRs allow you to overexpose the scene (to bring out the detail in the shadows) or to underexpose (bring out the details in the lighted areas).

The photographer using an SLR has many more tools at his disposal than the same photographer with a point-and-shoot. By adjusting the aperture (the gateway through which light comes into the camera) the photographer can manipulate both light levels and depth-of-field. Adjusting for depth is what allows a photographer to blur out the fore- and background of subjects as seen in most portraits. By adjusting the shutter speed, the photographer can manipulate light levels and the degree of motion in a shot. High shutter speeds lessen the amount of light coming into a camera while simultaneously freezing an image in a moment of time. Slower shutter speeds allow more light to fall on the film, and create blurred motion that can affect the mood in a picture.

The field of photography is currently at a threshold phase. Professional photographers have watched digital photography begin to uproot traditional film photography. For the last few years professional photographers have been buffered from the transition to digital imaging because the digital market did not offer professional grade digital cameras for reasonable prices. Those digital cameras that where readily available did not produce professional images. But the times have changed.

My first digital camera was a point-and-shoot Kodak DC3400. It offered 2.0 megapixels (which equates to resolution). Despite the disadvantages of being a point-and-shoot, I was amazed at the crisp quality of the images. I took portraits and landscapes with ease. The images could be printed at a digital imaging center like Cord Camera for the same price as developing film reprints, and the image quality was high grade. I was sold on digital photography.

While I used the Kodak even for some professional work (as a photojournalist and for portraits), I knew that I would have to obtain a digital SLR. A professional cannot depend on a point-and-shoot because he needs artistic options and because people generally don't take seriously a photographer using a point-and-shoot.

I purchased the Minolta Dimage 7. This digital SLR boasts 5.24 megapixels. It's lense is the equivalent of a 28-200mm. Using a 128 megabyte flashcard, I can take 62 photo-quality images. While I've noticed some characteristics about the camera that weren't designed for every type of photography (notably, sports in low-light situations because the auto-focus is not as quick as in other cameras; also, the camera has be turned on for the photographer to look through the lense), I feel that going digital has been a wise decision. You save money on buying film, you don't have to pay for developing pictures you don't want just to see the pictures you've taken, and storage of digital pictures is much more space-saving. When you take thousands of pictures a month, that equates to a lot of saved money and space.

I recommend that students of photography begin their studies with a digital SLR. I defend this belief against a wide range of photography critics who claim that digital photography somehow take the "art" from photography. I feel such sentiments are nothing more than an expression of stubborness.

A digital SLR can quickly teach photography students the fundamentals of photography. The greatest lesson a digital camera offers is an immediate demonstration of the relationship between shutter speed and aperture settings relating to scenery. In traditional film photography, the student is forced to await film development to see the results of his settings; by then, it's not likely he even remembers the settings for each photograph.

To see my professional photography site, go to www.smopix.com.

Copyright © 2002 by Shawn Olson. All rights reserved. To get permission to use any of these images, send an email to shawn@shawnolson.net. To return to the home page, go to www.shawnolson.net