It’s winter in the western/northern Finger Lakes region of New York, which means there’s not much activity out here.

So, I spent a few minutes today looking at all my blog posts. . .okay, more like a couple of hours. Some of my photos downright embarrass me! A few others are so good I can’t believe they’re mine. Most, though, are mediocre (according to REAL photographers), but who cares, I see a gradual improvement over the past nine years, and that is very satisfying. 🙂

As I ponder, I regret some of the gear choices I have made. I started with an elderly, inexpensive, gifted gray-market Canon… but don’t let anyone tell you how bad these products are! I got some pretty good shots, especially from my 1100d, before they all passed, one by one, into the 18% grey stratosphere far above, the final resting place of all good cameras once their time on earth is done.

I fooled around with a few different brands for a while, trying to find the one with the best results. As I look back, I think I miss my Olympic gear the most. Loved the color science, the IBIS, the lenses, the weight (or lack thereof), but was convinced by a former mentor to ditch it in favor of Nikon DSLRs (the 850 and the 500). I’m now up to the Z9 and saving for a good Z distance lens. . .but I might try to find some lightly used Olympic stuff, to see if I reallyreallyREALLY like it or if I’m just being nostalgic.

These photos could use some improvements, I know, but considering that they all fell out of the camera as untouched jpgs, they really aren’t that bad. What I find really curious, though, is the noise factor — none were edited for noise (or anything else), but noise doesn’t to be much of a problem with the small-sensor Olympus and Panasonics. Huh?

Anyway, on the advice of that former mentor, I sold all these cameras, including my Olympus EMx-1 (wahhh) and settled on the Nikon d500 and d800 with a 200-500 lens. Later on I added a Z9 and a 500 pf prime with an FTZ adapter and 1.4 extender (that was back when I had some money!). Under his tutelage I learned how to make simple corrective edits with ACR, but that didn’t help most of my photos. A good number were best treated by <delete>, and I didn’t need anyone to show me how to use THAT.

Nonetheless, I remain determined to improve my technique — that’s an achievable goal, right? even for a short, round, opinionated old lady.

So, I ditched the expensive mentor, who had outlived his usefulness, and moved on up to the cheap self-education available on You-Tube 24/7.

I really didn’t get significantly better photos, though, despite wasting a lot of time (and brain cells) worshipping YouTube’s guru-du-jour. Oh, these guys are well known among Nikon and Canon crowds, so it’s really no secret who they are. They preach long and hard — and they make a lot of noise and a lot of money — but all I learned from them were some specialty terms and how to select (what I thought were) the best lessons from all the conflicting advice. And I still returned from the field with a camera full of soft, flat photos.

Ewwwww.

But then I learned something astonishing. It struck me one day like a snowball thrown by a giggling, pimply-faced 14-year-old: YouTube lessons work best only when unlearned. I discovered this after finding a Facebook group called Nikon Teaching Photography. The admin, Bob Scola, has a large following and an even larger online volume of stellar videos, explaining all things Nikon, on a site called EyeSo100. You can check them out here:

https://www.eyeso100.com/spaces/10626684/content

and for $100 a year (or $10 monthly payments for us poor folks) it, too, can all be yours. (Actually, I’ve wasted more money at McDonald’s, where I could sit undisturbed, shaking my head while previewing the day’s photos. . .)

My first lesson was removing “back button focus” from the list of sainted practices. Because, really — what does it actually do, other than moving shutter button functions elsewhere? Despite rather intense and somewhat convincing guru-preaching, it does exactly what The Temptations told us back in 1969 when they sang about “war, humph, good God, y’all, what is it good for,” which is “absolutely nuthin! (say it again). . .in fact, “[it’s] nuthin’ but a heartbreaker[!]” But I suppose it can be quite entertaining if reassigning camera button functions amuses you — and, if it does, congratulations! You are now part of a cult!

And thus began my foray into real photography education.

(HINT: If you do join Nikon Teaching Photography, don’t even try to defend BBF. Just go watch the EyeSo100 video, which clearly debunks all the hype. Because just a few days ago someone got blocked for ignoring the video and politely arguing on its behalf, just sayin.)

I found Bob after an outing where I had captured a stunning composition of two young foxes playing on some railroad tracks. . .until an oncoming mile-long freighter sent us all running. Once safely seated in the car, I eagerly opened <preview> — and found that every single photo was just awful. . .I was horrified! Every, Single. One. They all looked great on the microscopic <preview> screen, but at 100% they were unbelievably bad — soft focus, poor exposure, glaring white areas — despite checking all the boxes on the You-Tube checklist — or so I thought:

• I had carefully metered and exposure-compensated so as to not blow out the whites
• I had adjusted my position to achieve an angle that avoided direct harsh light
• I had captured adorable images of frisky little foxes jumping around using the Rule of Thirds
• I had steadied the camera (and me) against the side of the car and used VR to prevent movement and camera shake
• I had spot-metered (actually, highlight-metered) the subjects to get the exposure right
• I had used a wide aperture to get the best bokeh and a fast shutter to lessen harsh light and capture action

and none of it worked. These photos punched me in the gut every time I looked at them.

Desperate to salvage at least one of them (I felt the composition was that good), I sought advice from a “beginner’s” FB group that I had found (where else but) on YouTube.

Big mistake. It was a public group, comprised of myriad self-proclaimed experts whose “advice” was gathered from the most esoteric parts of the 300-page Nikon manual and relayed in the haughtiest of self-glorifying terms. But it translated into one thing: “sucks to be you but not to be me.” All I got from them was embarrassed, especially when the admin featured my horrendous photo AND MY NAME! (without my permission) on his world-wide YouTube channel as proof that some photographers are so lousy they shouldn’t even waste their time. Or his.

Speaking of wasting time, he wondered out loud why I didn’t correct the slightly-off horizon. Dude, what for? How would a one-degree horizon correction redeem this unredeemable photo?

(I’d tell you HIS name, but I hate him, so all I will say is that, should you wish to be insulted (free of charge!), you can find him on YT and FB as “Photography Explained.” I would propose a more appropriate title, “Photography Explained by Arrogant Dummies,” but what do I know.)

Anyway

After suffering a severe existential meltdown (complete with tears), I blocked Professor Explained along with several of his worst FB cohorts. I then contemplated selling all my gear at bargain prices — why not, I was hopeless! — but after a couple of weeks I had recovered enough composure to try just. one. more. time — and that’s when I found Bob Scola. No shame! No bragging! No snarky comments!” Just good, solid, workable advice explained in a way that even *I* can understand.

And it really helped! I found features on my cameras that I never knew existed, which allowed me to fully utilize my gear. I learned new and effective techniques that were easily replicated and produced the predicted results. But most of all, I regained my confidence, which allowed me to remand Photography Explained to the lowest level of the electronic basement, where all public groups, world-wide YT channels, and their anonymous but arrogant keyboard elitists spend their days impressing their friends and confounding their enemies and spend their nights. . .well, I don’t want to know what they spend their nights doing.

So, I decided to test my new knowledge and took a ride out to my favorite-ist dirt road in Savannah, NY, where I had originally found the foxes but now hoped to find a few hardy winter birds. Maybe my photos won’t be perfect, but at least now I will understand why and will be able to take the necessary steps toward improvement.

The first lifeform I found was this inquisitive squirrel. A little soft, but better soft than no shot at all (the tree bark, though, is nice and sharp — I mean, it’s not like I didn’t have the focus box squarely on his right eye, but go figure).

There were sparrows galore, all feasting on the dirt-road grit. Of course they scattered, despite my sneaky attempts to keep my distance.

In fact, I was so intent on (visually) capturing a few more tree sparrows that I nearly missed this guy sitting in a tree, watching the show.

I waited about 30 minutes for him (her?) to take off, but no go. He did, however, have an itch. Or maybe he was looking for his keys:

Eh, the most exciting thing I could catch was a sudden spook, which caused a rapid spin-around that almost dislodged the poor thing:

The Merlin app thought it heard a screech owl, so I was off to find it. No luck, but I did find a heap of trumpeter swans, a bunch of gulls, and a variety of geese hanging out in the mucklands.

Savannah’s mucklands are a unique geophysical attribute resulting from Seneca River overflows, which happen whenever the wet weather will allow (the water table is quite high in this area and the river hasn’t been dredged since the 19th century). The town is quite proud of this feature — they even have a road named Muckland Road (…as well as another named simply “No. 39.” Gotta luv beautiful downtown Savannah!). During spring migration the mucklands provide a resting place for ducks, geese (sometimes even a flock or two of snow geese), and swans. They are safe from hunters here, because these lands are also farmlands whose harvest litter attracts foraging birds and other animals; therefore, hunting is prohibited by local, state, and federal regulations.

The crows were not welcome in the mucklands, but they amused themselves by annoying each other while foraging in the adjacent icy marsh.

Off to the B&H site to check out some Olympus prices!