Curious ...

Mushroom sprouting at Totara Park, Manukau City.

Not so long ago I went to a seminar given by a well known photographer.  He presented a range of his images taken over many years and then started to ask a few questions of the audience.  One question that intrigued me was, "how many of your photographs do you print?"  This was quickly followed by, "when you do print your photographs, how large are the prints?".  It's not that long ago that pretty well all the photographs you took were printed ... and you got a new film thrown in when you collected your prints so you could create yet more prints!

Cactus at Auckland's Botanic Gardens.

At the time, I didn't pay much attention to these questions as the audience's response led the presenter to suggest shooting RAW at a high resolution was unnecessary.  I've always shot at the highest quality possible as  once the moment had passed there was no way I could repeat the shot so I did the best I could with the equipment and resources at hand.

Anyway, back to the first two questions.  I hardly print any of my images ...  and I take considerably more photographs now than I ever did when using film.  Some of my photographs come here on the blog for folks to see, others are saved to DVDs and then sent to family and friends so they can see them on their TVs, whereas others go to Flickr or other websites where they may be critiqued by fellow enthusiasts.

So, a question for you.  Do you print your photographs, and if you do, at what size?  I'd also be intrigued to know whether you'd buy somebody else's photograph and, if you would, why?  Haha!  Perhaps you'd buy some of mine :)

Succulent at Auckland's Botanic Gardens. 

Anyway, whilst pondering these thoughts I headed off for a walk to Totara Park ... a friend mentioned there was a lot of toadstools that may be worth a look.  It started off well, bu then the rains came.  I got a few shots ... but nothing with which I was pleased really.  The first shot in this post intrigued me.  Many of the toadstools were already sprouted and looking like toadstools, or they'd been partially devoured by slugs or other hungry creatures.  This wee white toadstool, however, was just emerging from the ground.  f2.8 allowed me to get a shallow depth of field and separate the emerging toadstool from the cluttered background.  The second shot is of a cactus at the Botanic Gardens.  I quite liked the spines ... hence the shot.  Final shot is a tight crop of a succulent, again at the gardens.  I really liked the spiral effect, water droplets from the earlier rain and the colours in the "leaves".

So, let me ask you something else.  Do you like the shots?  If you had a camera with you, would you take similar images?  If you did ... would you print them?