Week 5: Still Flailing, Still Learning
Wildlife, Water, and Whatever else Catches my Eye!
PHOTO JOURNAL 2026
James Bradley
1/29/20263 min read
February
Wildlife, Water, and Whatever else Catches my Eye!
Week 5
Well, it looks like I made it to the first week of February! I am still very much in the throes of “take pictures of everything and see what happens” stage of my photo challenge. I’ve made it through January, which honestly felt like an accomplishment all by itself. It turns out that even a picture a day sounds simple enough until you actually try to do it. After being at it for a month I realized that some days your brain has about as much creativity as a frozen potato.
This week, while in flail mode, I had a little bit of everything. I had birds on the ice, rocks along the water, poker night, a portrait from said poker night, some graffiti on a railcar, frozen water, and even a squirrel trying to blend into the trees. Squirrels are notoriously camera shy. I found that out the hard way. This guy hid from me for the better part of an hour before I got the few shots that I did. If there was a theme for the week, it was probably just me pointing the camera at whatever caught my attention and hoping something useful came out of it. A month in and this seems to be a recurring theme. Am I really into it long enough to claim to have a theme for my photo challenge? I honestly have no idea I guess we’ll see.
Thanks to a bunch of research, and help from multiple sources, (YouTube—specifically Tony Northrup, High Desert Photographers Camera Club, and the folks at Perfect Light Camera) I am starting to learn what makes a photo work. There are a whole lot of factors that go into a good photograph. Sometimes it is the light. Sometimes it is the subject. Sometimes it is the timing. And sometimes it is just dumb luck, which I am absolutely willing to accept at this point in the process. Along with those parts of photography, learning to make your camera work for you is a huge part of it. I cannot stress enough how horrible it has been trying to learn how to use my little, beat up 15-year-old Sony A6000 mirrorless camera. I needed to learn all about this strange thing called the exposure triangle. Aperture, Shutter Speed, and ISO. Missing a setting on any one of these can make or break your photo. Shooting in the right format, RAW vs. JPG, influences photo quality as well. Boy, do I have a lot to learn. What did I get myself into?
My favorite photo from this week is probably the squirrel in the tree. It is not perfect, but I like how it feels like a small hidden moment. The squirrel is tucked into the branches, and you have to look for it a little. I like photos that make you slow down for a second.
My least favorite is probably the poker table shot. I like the idea of it, and I like the story behind it, but the lighting and composition are not quite where I wanted them. It feels like one of those shots where I saw something interesting but did not quite know how to capture it yet.
That seems to be a recurring theme, doesn’t it? The photo of the rocks and ice is one I keep coming back to as well. There is something about the texture and cold feeling in that shot that I like. I can tell I was starting to pay more attention to details, shapes, and contrast instead of just trying to take a picture of an obvious subject.
So, Week 5 is in the books. I am still flailing, still learning, and still trying to figure out what I am doing with this camera. But I am also starting to notice things I would have walked right past before, and that might be the whole point of this challenge.
I would love to get some feedback from you all about the photography learning process, Please feel free to shoot me an email via my contact page.
Thanks for reading!
