Here is my favourite picture, taken in a church I shall not say where for now.
It looks like an ordinary picture. Nothing special.
But the reason why I love it so much is because it’s was very hard for me to take it. Technically speaking.
I was just learning…aperture, shutter speed, metering, focal length and all these other stuff I shall not bore you with. In fact I am still learning and discovering new things everyday. And it baffles and frustrates me why I couldn’t capture things the way I envision them eventhough I’ve stuck to the all the tried and tested techniques.
We entered this church. It was dark, peaceful, quiet. We were the only ones there. I had a sunken feeling in my gut, thinking that it would be impossible for me to capture the atmosphere of the church due to the darkness. I didn’t have a tripod with me either and my hands….my hands are made for jerking off -_-.
I wanted the blades of lights and I also wanted the walls to be exposed properly.
So I tried. And tried. And tried. The walls were underexposed. The walls were overexposed. The light was too bright. The stained glass looked washed out. The stained glass disappeared. The whole picture was blurred. Bottomline is, I just couldn’t get the right picture!
So I stopped for a while and gathered my thoughts. What on earth was I doing wrong? And just as suddenly, there was a light bulb moment.
It was the freakin’ metering! I had only learnt about the magic of metering earlier that day and did not really give much thought to it, since matrix metering had served me very well so far. And for the life of me, I just couldn’t comprehend the usage of other metering modes besides matrix.
I set my camera to spot metering, knelt and propped it on the bench at 45 degrees pointing at the walls and took a shot. And there, my favourite picture :)
It’s amazing and mind boggling how an unassuming setting could make such a huge difference. And this is going to sound dramatic, but I knew I’ve found my passion there and there. I am no longer the girl with no passions.