When your mouth drops open, click the shutter.
~Harold Feinstein
Mastering the craft
You feel it in your guts, you sense it in your soul. You are keenly aware of your surroundings – green shrubbery, emerald sea, blue sky, sepia rocks, curves and shapes, details and highlights. You were trained for this, maybe not formally, but experience has thought you well. You know what is picturesque, appealing, inspiring and moving. You know that gradations, tonalities and contrasts provide depth. That color can be captured in its dynamic range. That composition can spell the difference between a snapshot and an image of photographic quality. You are ready when you are at ease with your environment and you know what to do. You are ready when you can capture with confidence, and be self-assured of the outcome. Yours is the world around you when you can feel it, sense it and be one with it like body and soul, intertwined and inseparable. When your camera becomes the extension of your physique and you wield it like a brush on canvass, then yours is the art of craftsmanship and capture, the master whose every subject bows willingly at every command.