Simply Ordinary

I am not anxious to do more model shoots right now. I loved the shoot with Zac last Saturday. Working with models satisfies a deep urge but I am ever more aware of how much I need to learn about digital photography.

I spent the whole afternoon yesterday with Deke McClelland on lynda.com. I didn't even finish one chapter of the first of his three "essential" tutorials on Photoshop CS3. I have decided I need to put in real time to learning the image-editing software. I can't just limp along, learning the little I need to do a specific job on a shoot. I need to learn not only advanced techniques but, sadly and seriously, I must build from scratch. I need to learn the basics.
St. Paul wrote to the Christians in first-century Corinth: "When I was a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully..."

We think of life as a journey. Where we are at the moment we can see a little of the future but only dimly. Only by taking the steps do we change our perspective. Experience changes us. We understand what we have gone through. It is foolish to think we can jump hoops and land where we want to be and skip the necessary steps to get there.

Buddhism teaches there is no unchanging person. There is the "I," the mind that reviews what has gone by and using what it knows tries to see into the future but it is no longer that person of long ago that sees what it sees today. We are not what we were a minute ago.

I have plenty of digital images to practice the new skills I am acquiring. I will continue to look for opportunities to shoot models. Meanwhile there are images around me just waiting to be captured, and the thousands of images already captured that I could see with the new eyes study is giving me.