I've started this blog to have an outlet for my thoughts about photography. There are a lot of photography fora on the Internet, but the signal to noise ratio is rather high. Here I will have room for comments from others, but my voice will have the greatest weight.
I've called this blog "Fixing Light" because that is what photography is, at least on a mechanical level. The focus on the technical side of photography is intentional. I might say something about the artistic aspect every once in a while, but I expect most posts to deal with the "how" and leave the "why" to others. There is a lot of misinformation and confusion on the internet about the mechanics of photography and, even though I can't force everyone to read and/or believe me, I aim to document the reality of it. There are many wonderful and subjective "why"s, but the "how"s can actually be nailed down.
That said, I am no physicist - and one really needs to be to understand the finer points of how light acts as it passes through a piece of glass or a circular aperture. This blog will also document how my understanding of photography changes over time. Hopefully it will increase! And I will hopefully be able to convey what I have learned to you.
As a painter must know brushes and paints or a sculptor must know chisels and marble, so must a photographer know the camera, the lens and the nature of light. Though tool fetishism is a constant danger in this age of ever-advancing cameras, ignoring your tools is just as great a sin. We should build our technical knowledge so that when light becomes fixed on the sensor to form an image, it is the image we wanted to capture.
