Hi Stephen
I don't know if there is an easy answer to your problem.
My passion at present is photographing horses racing, especially harness
racing. I am just now starting to be happy with the majority of my
photographs. The last year has been a big, long, steep learning curve.
I have burnt a lot of film, and I try to make every new roll better than
the last. I go to at least one meeting a week, most times two, including
trials every Sunday morning. The horses practice racing, I practice
photographing them. Every time I get a film developed I look at it
critically, finding things that I like, and finding things I have done
wrong. The next time out I try to improve on the bad, whilst trying to
retain the good. It is most times easier said than done.
Throughout it all, though, I have kept working towards goals. I'm trying to
get to the point where I'm good enough to be able to photograph horses
racing and be able to sell the prints to the owners. Whether I actually go
down the path of selling prints is a different matter, I want to get to
that point where the results are good enough to be sold. I'm at the point
now where a number of shots are good enough, but I'm still "missing" more
than I'd like.
One thing I have noticed in the last year is that I find I need to
concentrate on the task in hand. If I'm at the races with friends, I leave
the cameras behind. It is hard to concentrate on more than one thing at a
time. You may want to try going to a couple of meetings just to photograph,
not officiate.
Equipment wise, I find I am using Fuji Press 800 almost exclusively when I
photograph horses. It allows fast shutter speeds with good depth of field
during the day. I have now got a decent monopod, which has helped
considerably with stability ( and my confidence). I use a Z-1p, MZ-3 with
primes (50/1.7, 105/2.8, 135/2.8 and 300/4). I get to borrow a Sigma
70-200/2.8 this weekend (with a bit of luck) so I'll be giving that a good
work out.
If you play golf you'll understand that it is that one good drive, or that
one 20 foot putt that gets you back next week. I find the same with my
photography. That one good shot makes it all worthwhile.
Cheers
At 22:06 24/04/01, you wrote:
>A question, please, to the collective Pentaxian wisdom:
>
> How do you psych yourselves back up out of a slump,
> namely a run of bad results? Or maybe more important,
> how do you psych yourselves so that a run of bad results
> doesn't degenerate into a self-perpetuating slump?
>
>Saturday and Sunday I was out at the first motorcycle event
>at my local road circuit (albeit primarily as a corner marshal
>and only secondarily as a photographer). I thought that at
>the beginning of my fifth season I would have internalized
>enough that I'd start seeing past the details and could
>concentrate on making photographs. This turned out not to be
>the case: It was like I didn't know anything, and Sunday night
>I went away with a really bad feeling that turned out even
>worse than I anticipated when the prints came back yesterday.
>Bad exposure (mostly over), bad color, bad focus, inappropriate
>depths of field, and bad technique -- even on panning, which I
>usually seem to have a knack for.
>
>Even allowing for a possible subconscious paranoia (that I'd have
>to drop the camera in a hurry because a bike and rider would
>come tumbling toward me through the gravel trap), I'm still
>asking myself: How could I have sucked that bad?
>
>(Dirty details: LX w/winder mostly on manual, 70-210A f/4 and
>300M* f/4, Fuji Reala and Superia 200)
>
>All moral support appreciated...
>
>
>Stephen Moore
>__________________________________________
>"You got a Zarg in here? Are you *nuts*???
>-
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Jon
Relax! Take life as it comes, you can't chase the sun, you can't race the wind
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