Think before you click!

So you have your digital camera and it's great because you can take as many pictures as you want... for free! But wait a minute. Are those pictures really free? It's true that you no longer pay for film and processing, which if I took as many film pictures on 35mm film as I currently do with my digital cameras, I would go broke - but in the long run, digital pictures are not really free. Here are three reasons why:

1. Equipment life. It's the law of physics, I suppose. Anything with moving parts or that uses light/heat eventually wears out. You computer equipment, has a limited life based upon hours of usage or activations. Your camera shutter, for instance, typically has a life of about 100,000 activations. Lights burn out (including flashbulb lights), computer hard drives fail and things get dropped and worn out... usually as a result of active usage.  And batteries - whether "one-use" alkaline batteries or even rechargeable, they still all have a limited life.
   
   
2. Storage. Whether you are storing your photos on a hard drive, CD- or DVD-ROM disks or memory cards - all these storage mediums cost money. The more mega-pixels your camera has, the more storage it takes and some people believe in storing TIFF or RAW images, which take up a HUGE amount of space.
   
   
3. Time. I don't know about anyone or everyone else, but my time is pretty much directly equal to dollar - or potential dollars. My time is precious! If I am sitting there editing mediocre photos in all my spare time, it's taking time away from doing other things that could be more valuable. This is why I may either choose to not take a picture or to delete one while it is still in my camera. Why bother with pictures that just won't make the cut?

I am in no way discouraging anybody from taking pictures. I consider my first DSLR (the one that I own now) my "practice" camera... the one I am learning on. So I'll do a lot of experimenting and trying to get things right. When I'm ready to move up, I'll move on to a better camera and sell my old equipment on eBay or use it for backup. I have taken a LOT of pictures just to practice with, but recently I have been more discriminating about what I shoot or at least how I shoot it. The bottom line is this: If you are going to go through the effort of doing something, you might as well do it RIGHT. Make it worth your while. Think... compose your photo... set up your camera properly... take a little time BEFORE you push the shutter release to ensure that the quality of pictures will be what you will want to keep, or that a higher percentage of them will be "keepers." After all, we're trying to get away from ordinary snapshots, right?

By now, I am anxious to get to the "nuts and bolts" of photography, so the next posts will start to be practical information that you can start using.