Here we go with Week 8
Learning Lessons the Hard Way!
PHOTO JOURNAL 2026
James Bradley
2/26/20263 min read
Chasing Angles and Consistency
Week 8
Here we go with Week 8!
The end of two months of my photo challenge. I experimented with light, reflections, wildlife, roads, rails, I learned a few more lessons the hard way.
I am finding out that getting the right light is a real pain in the ass! I found out the hard way, that even if you have a good subject, a decent idea, and all the enthusiasm in the world, if the light isn’t right, any photo still has a pretty good chance of falling flat on its face. Trust me, I have a ton that have done exactly that. This is going to be one hell of a learning process.
I did a lot of experimenting with light, reflections, and distance. I had birds in flight! This is no small feat. Shutter speed matters. On the other side of that I got ducks on the water, a road stretching out toward the hills, cattails in the evening light (for a halo effect), railroad tracks (Dutch tilt), cactus, and a wide shot of ducks swimming in formation. Here you all thought that ducks only flew in formation. Can you tell that there is still plenty of flailing going on? I think the flailing was starting to have a little more direction.
The ducks in flight were probably one of the harder shots this week. I am quickly finding out that birds do not wait for you to figure out your camera settings. They just take off and leave you standing there wondering why everything is blurry and why your photo looks like crap (see above comment about shutter speed)! I like the shot, though, because it feels like I was starting to catch movement instead of just photographing things sitting still. It’s just another thing I had to learn in addition to the whole light issue. Could there possibly be any more to learn about this monster called photography?
My favorite photo this week is probably the shot of the cat tails. I particularly like that I was able to get the halo on the plants. It feels like there is a story there, even if I am not totally sure what the story is yet. It almost has a surreal feel to it. I think that has to do with the lighting. Wait, I can get dramatic effect with lighting? No way! Oh boy, another new interesting bit of tid!
My least favorite is probably the wide duck photo across the water. I like the idea of it, and I like the reflection, but the ducks feel too far away and small in the frame. I also found out that ducks are, in fact, a nightmare to get photos of in flight. They are extremely skittish. It’s one of those shots where I saw something interesting, but I do not think I quite figured out how to make the photo match what I was seeing in person. Tricky little buggers they are!
The railroad track photo is another one I keep looking at. I was clearly playing with leading lines and perspective, even if I probably would not have explained it that way at the time. Getting low to the ground changed the whole feel of the shot, and that is something I need to keep practicing.
In an interesting little side note to this shot, I posted this one in one of my social media beginner photography groups. I am not sure what result I was expecting, maybe a bit of constructive feedback, maybe something else. What I got was an explosion of controversy about me sitting on the track to take the damned photo! I had over 300 responses to the post and they were about split between “great photo” to “stay off the tracks, lest ye be killed to death”!
The cactus photo, one of my New Mexico shots, surprised me a little. I like the texture and the backlight, but it also shows me how tricky it can be to balance bright light behind a subject. There is a lot going on in that image, but I still like the mood of it. After I was done with the photo safari that night I went into more research and found about a thing called zebras (not the African striped animal). It’s a setting the camera that will show you where your photo is going to be over or under exposed.
I am still guessing, still learning, and still taking plenty of shots that miss the mark. But I am starting to understand that photography is not just about the subject. It is about light, timing, angle, distance, composition, and whether I can slow down long enough to see what is in front of me.
I would love to get some feedback from you all about the photography learning process. Please feel free to shoot me an email through my contact page.
Thanks for reading!
