WHY?

Why do I want to learn “Photography” or in other words learn the manual mode in a camera?

Today, I was going through a camera manual and I sensed a feeling of disdain when I looked at the “special scene settings”. The exact feeling that went through my mind was: “True photographers won’t use these settings”. Now, the real question is, did I want to become a “true photographer” or to take better pictures? Suddenly I realized the optimization the brain performs – use assumptions/stereotypes without going to their logical end, to prove if the assumption was true. Now I understand the meaning of the phrase “thinking something through”.

We require a lot of practice to spend some more time thinking. I know we have to achieve as much as possible in as little time, in other words, use “quick and dirty” methods, because increasingly the only yardstick the world uses to measure our life’s achievements is quantity and not quality. We find it increasingly difficult nowadays to measure ourselves with our own yardsticks rather than the one prevailing outside. The real challenge is to ensure that we don’t give in to the temptation of foregoing our internal standards to take shortcuts to appear cool/successful in other’s eyes.