Dear Luminous Landscape users,
I would like to introduce myself to your -
before I go into my detailed questions - regarding my photographic development. I'm a 30 year old male from Germany, who is interested in photography since almost 12 years.
I started photography with a really cheap and old Konica camera, I printed some of these photos in a supermarket and fell in love with the - horrible
- outcome. After I bought my first digital camera, the Sony f717, I joined a photocommunity and developed a typical simple style. It had to be eye candy. Macro shots, shots from abandoned buildings etc. Nothing special, but I enjoyed it.
After I wanted to get deeper into photography, I changed from the Sony f717 to the Canon 30d and from 2006 until now I worked with the Canon 5d. I love this camera, the lenses and the haptics. And of course the outcome. In between, I tried to change to the Leica M8, but I'm unfortunately not a patient person, I struggled with the non-existing autofocus and I did not enjoy the rangefinder system at all.
Currently, my Canon 5d seems to breath it's last breath. I have several electronical issues - had it of course in repair - but I have the feeling, it wont last long enough, since new problems occured.
So of course, I've started to look around for a replacement. At first I thought of the Canon 5d mkIII, so that I could use my existing lenses and other gear.
Later, I thought of getting a PhaseOne, because I want to try myself into some landscape photography and now I'm having the thoughts again, to buy a Leica. Maybe the M-E, oder M9-p model.
So it would be only the choice of a camera body and then everything would be fine, right? But there is always the
BUT...
But I'm not only uncertain, what kind of camera I should buy, I'm also uncertain about my photographic development. As I said in the beginning, I shot macro things, abandoned buildings - nothing really special. I later began to go into portraits of friends and lately some street.
Due to my job, I live in different countries and I change my country where I'm living in from time to time. So I'm having the opportunity to see places, which are for others not so easy to visit - an opportunity I'd like to document with my (future) camera.
Since I'm also not happy with my workflow in Aperture, I frankly stopped working on photography for the last months. I had to fix several steps in my workflow (adding metadata and later keywords, which I did not in the beginning), I lost the joy of working with a photodatabase. It feels more like organising photos, instead of working
creative. I would also put my focus on the fact, that my database consists of about 7000 photos only. I also try not to 100 pictures of the same image, I always try to reflect and improve on my skill and style.
With these thoughts in mind, I'm at the moment
clueless, wheter it's only an urge for a new "toy", instead of a real development, if I'm buying for example a Leica with one or two lenses.
I love to have the best possible quality, so I can focus my amateurish skill on the subject, instead of loosing quality while owning a cheap camera. But at the same time I know, that a superb camera wont create strong images, if your skill sucks. Simple as that.
My questions to the advanced photographers and more experienced ppl outhere are:Have you ever come across such a roadblock in your mind, where you can't decide what to do with your photography? I've never started an exibition, I even printed only a few photos, somehow I only have a small need to try this.
I also don't know where to go with my existing skill and experience. Should I go more into street, more into portraits? Right now it feels only like a documentation of things, out of boredom. Is it a problem, because I'm not "seeing" things in my Aperture database right? Does a complete reoganisation help? Does printing help to "see" better?
Should I try again a Leica system, because it feels better for me in the street genre (I hate to to have this huge body in front of my face), or am I missing a point, because I'm stuck with thoughts on gear?
I know it is a quite personal problem, but I'm happy if I could get some responses and maybe start a little discussion, that'll help me out of my block. I also hope, that my english isnt' too bad and you guys understand my issues. :-)
[Moderator Edit to delete URL]
Thanks for reading and many thanks in advance
whooohooo