What has PAD taught you???

[wvaphoto]

Hi folks,
I did pretty well at keeping up with PAD for six months but have slowed down a little since the first of the year. But I have a question.

What has PAD taught you? I see many posts around that PAD has taught them things about their equipment, subject matter, etc. What has it taught you?

I can say that I have learned a lot about my equipment, and PAD has forced me to try things with my camera (photographically speaking) that I wouldn't have tried before.

What about you?

Rich from WV
http://www.pbase.com/wvaphoto/

[blachly]

I have always shot landscape and wildlife. My home of Dallas, Texas (USA)doesn't have either of those. So doing a PAD has taught me to go outside of my boundries and try new things. I have gotten some great abstract shots since then as well as trying new techniques.

It has also taught me that pbase is full of comical and sarcastic people. Keep it up! LOL.

Mike Blachly
http://www.pbase.com/blachly

[stuegan]

Hi Rich,

I only managed about six months of PAD myself before stopping last year but felt it helped me in a lot of ways; I've seen quite a few threads in this forum over the past six months where people have discussed how it has helped them, and you mention some above yourself which I think apply to me too.

Looking back the main thing that helped me while doing a PAD was the community feeling between current PADers and, I suppose, people who have done a PAD in the past. For me, because I would be on PBase at some point every day, I quickly built up a list of photographers I liked through the usual checking of the PAD meta-gallery or clicking on profiles I'd see all over the place (and there are some I've discovered even after finishing that were posting excellent images every day that I'd completely missed).

I'd not been trying to take photos for that long, I've never been on a course of any kind, and I still know very little about equipment and settings, so in that sense joining in with the PAD community meant I found an extremely interesting set of different styles and ideas, which then obviously gets you looking for different things when you're out and about and trying new things out, searching for your own style. I could be wrong but I think that's why a lot of people starting out say it helps them.

So basically to cut a long ramble short, it taught me to see things differently after seeing the work of so many others. Taking a PAD taught me to appreciate the environment around me and take in details a lot more, both outdoors and indoors, however dull-looking it may seem at first.

I think I did the right thing in stopping a few months back, but can't stop thinking about starting it up again!

Cheers,

Stu

[floradoragirl]

There are lots of things I learned from PaDding but I'll try to keep it down to a few things.

It taught me to be comfortable with my new camera when I got it and then the next one when I got that one!

It taught me to look for beauty in different places. Before I started doing a pad, I probably took pictures when something, such as a landscape, struck me as beautiful. After 2+ years of padding I saw beauty in different places, I learned that sometimes you have to seek the beauty out, that sometimes you have to create the beauty for yourself.

It taught me to be more ambitious about what I shoot and how I shoot it.

It taught me that however good your eye is, if you have your camera with you, you won't capture what you've seen. Though I've stopped pad'ding, I still travel daily with my camera.

It taught me that taking a picture every day can be exhausting even though it is rewarding.

It taught me a lot of technical stuff about how to take pictures. (though I'd be the first to admit there's still an awful lot I don't know!)

[clickaway]

Well, I now know that beauty is everywhere

[brucelittle]

Not a lot so far, but then I'm only 11 days in.

What I want it to do is to get me back to basics and give me more of an eye for a picture. I feel, rightly or wrongly, that of late I have taken to just wandering about with the camera shooting cliched shots at f8 and something.

Its been good fun so far but I'm sure it will get harder.

Hey - it might even teach me how to do an SP if I take up the Friday tradition.....

But not just yet.....

[wvaphoto]

Hi Brian,
I would say that doing PAD forces you to keep your camera with you. It is amazing at how many shots I missed in the past because I didn't have my camera with me.
Rich from WV
http://www.pbase.com/wvaphoto/

[wvaphoto]

Oops. Sorry Bruce. I suppose that doing a PAD causes you to call people by the wrong name too.
Rich

[windchimewalker]

Like Bruce, I'm only 11 days in, but what I've learned so far is that committing to pad is like starting any new relationship--it consumes my thoughts 24/7. I go to sleep at night thinking of what I might use as a subject the next day, dream about it, and wake up with it still on my mind. Then I can spend hours during the day taking different shots until I get something I like.

I've set a task-within-a-task for myself with pad 2007. I'm trying to stick to subjects within my house, and so far I've only gone outside that box once. This is new for me. I've usually photographed people, places, events, nature. So I'm having to learn to see my day-to-day environment with new eyes.

But I'd say the greatest learnings so far have come from the photos I see by other pad-ers. There is such variety in subject matter and technical approaches that my ideas about photography are being stretched into new shapes. Thanks for that!

Patricia Lay-Dorsey

[jdepould]

That it's most difficult to take good pictures in a place you know well. Cartier-Bresson can back me up on this one, too. Seriously though, it gets harder every day to come up with a fresh, artistically valuable image. I've also learned to live with the fact that there are days that I don't take a single image that I like.

[brucelittle]

You're right Rich. I really want to keep my camera with me but here's the catch. I don't want to lug an SLR around all the time so I need a compact to stuff in my pocket.

I am building up a library of lost images in my head 'cos I didn't have my gear with me.....

PaD is great fun but it's going to cost me.....