Namtastic Images, Video and Photography
List of Posts:
- Digital Asset Management
- Google Photos (coming soon)
- Photography Gear
- Photography Styles
- Travel Photography
- Street Photography
- Long Exposure Photography
- Portrait Photography
My Style of Photography – Minimal and Efficient
There are now more than 6 billion cameras and more than 4 billion unique camera owners on the planet. In 2014, 1 Trillion digital photos were taken. If you want your photography to be noticed, there’s a lot of competition. I have two main goals in my photography.
- Take better than average photos that are noticeable
- Never miss an opportunity to take a photo
For the first point, my goal is purposely achievable. I could have said “take the best photos possible”, but the time, effort and skill required to stay at the top 4 billion camera owners and be noticed is not realistic. The majority of photos, 89% in 2014, are taken with camera phones. There are two ways I think I differentiate my photography from all those camera phone shots.
- Use a better camera
- Edit the photos
I take both of these approaches depending on circumstances.
My approach to photography is minimalistic. There is a lot of photography and tech gear available to consumers and if you’re lucky enough to have the budget, you can try it all. However, I am budget conscious, mainly because I don’t want to own gear that I don’t use. The two cameras I currently use are the SONY RX100 compact digital camera, and the Huawei Nexus6P mobile phone camera.
My View on the Current State of Photography
Images, and more recently video dominate the internet as the currency of content. In the pursuit of providing better content, it makes sense that we want to improve our photography and video skills. By improve, I don’t necessarily mean quality. Improving the efficiency of producing and sharing pictures and video can lead to more successful content. Namtastic Photography is a category that includes content related to producing visual media efficiently. There are articles on photography techniques and digital camera reviews, in addition to digital media management and digital content marketing. You could be the best technical photographer in the world, but if you don’t have the skills to market yourself online, nobody will know about you, and you could be displaced by a young blogger with a mobile phone.
I’ve taken photos for several years, starting from simple film cameras then moving to my first digital camera, the SONY Cybershot P9 in 2002.
In later upgraded to a Canon IXY910s (Powershot SD870), and then from about 2012 I got a decent camera phone and started to leave my compact digital cameras at home. The quality of mobile cameras for point and shooting is great and the convenience of having photos automatically uploaded and ready to share is very convenient.
It was one particular mobile app, the Google Camera app, which caused me to change my mind about relying on mobile photography. In the Google Camera app there is an option to take photos in a mode called “lens blur”. This mode simulates a narrow depth of field with the subject in focus and the background defocused, putting emphasis on the subject. This is normally difficult to achieve with a mobile camera because mobile phone sensors are typically very small. I thought shots with a narrow depth of field looked professional and this made me consider taking photography more seriously and buying a camera with manual settings.
DSLR Cameras are typically quite large and heavy. I wanted a camera portable enough to take with me every day, I didn’t want something I would leave at home unless I specifically went out to do photography. So I made a compromise and bought the SONY RX100 M3. You can read my comprehensive review here.
With the SONY RX100 M3 I’m challenging my photography skills in many different styles including landscape, street, macro, portrait and long exposure photography.
Sharing Photos
I believe photos should be shared. It feels like a terrible waste to take millions of photos, save them to my phone or computer and never see them again. I like to share photos, but sharing requires organisation and curation. For this reason, my preferred photo sharing app is Snapchat. Snapchat is the fastest, easiest way to share photos instantly. The photos on Snapchat typically disappear after 24 hours, but I like the ability to share them instantly into a personal curated story that is played back automatically. I cross post photos to a number of social networks, but in order to not flood my viewers and to give them the best quality posts with relevant hashtags and other search optimisations, I usually only post once a day. Snapchat is different. I regularly post over 20 photos and videos a day to my story because optimisation isn’t needed. It’s a very interesting app and I recommend you check it out of you haven’t registered already.
My posts on Namtastic document my personal progression learning and appreciating the art in my free time. I like to discuss technique, camera gear and photo appreciation. One day I may consider pursuing a professional path in photography, or I might not. Either way it’s an adventure! Please have a look at my photography related posts, and feel free to ask questions or comment. if you like what you see, please share them on social media any way you like.