I started this blog a few months ago in order to improve my photography skills and learn things from other photographers.  With each post I often have to spend extra time researching things (though I admit I am sometimes lazy with bug Ids), which has added to my knowledge across the board.  Recently I have been thinking about what direction I want my photography to take.  Currently, I take primarily three types of pictures – macros (mostly insects), travel, and my kids.  On this blog the first category has certainly received the majority of the attention.  In a few cases I have also discussed real estate photography, which I am doing more and more.

Lately I have been pondering what additional equipment I should buy – and I still face a huge decision on where I should invest more – in additional macro equipment or in better lighting.  I can now say that I have made up my mind here, which will affect future directions on this blog.

Given the question above about equipment, I will be spending more on macro equipment than lighting, but the majority of the rest of the spending will be in macro.  I will detail in some other post what I specifically plan to purchase and why, but in general I plan to increase the types of macro photos I can take, as well as the quality of the ones I currently take.

However, that answer is a bit simplistic given what I decided.  I have decided to strive to utilize technical knowledge to create artistic works.  What exactly does that mean?  It means that I plan to learn more about the technology behind photography and use that knowledge to create artistic works.  By technical knowledge, I mean solid understanding of the nature and characteristics of light and how we perceive it.  I plan to learn what goes into the algorithms used for image processing and how some photographic equipment works.  This means understanding image processing, electronics, and other sciences.

I am not sure the exact path I will take, but in the future I expect to build some of my own equipment for specific situations.  I may even create a plugin for Photoshop – though that is a bit more doubtful.  However the key is not just to create great technical shots – but to create ones that are artistic and attractive.  This is a huge challenge, as most of the photography technicians I have seen out there – for instance the people that use lasers to capture bullets and insects in flight – do not create very artistic images in my opinion.  I have seen many images outstanding in technical merit – but not in artistic merit.  There are of course exceptions, and my hope is to become one of them.

This will be a long journey for me, so expect to see changes very slowly.  Right now I am reviewing my calculus textbooks to get back in tack with vector fields and differential equations.  After that comes studying electrodynamics and image processing.  I expect the biggest changes to occur next year, when I hope to start appyling my new knowledge.

So what does this mean for the blog?

In the near term, expect to see posts similar to the ones in the past.  I do hope to create a series of blogs on macro photography lighting, as my current post on it is very popular but I think it is lacking a lot of helpful info. 

In the farther term I hope to take you on this ride with me – sharing some of the new information I am learning.  This info will become increasingly technical, which makes me worry it will bore some of you.  You will of course still see the standard bugs and travel pictures, but I will also talk about things such as “What exactly is polarized light” and other topics that may require some math.

In order to keep everyone interested, the following are the possibilities.  By ‘technical’ entries I mean ones that require math, while non-technical entries will not.

a) Post technical and non-technical entries on this blog.  Some days the blog will be technical, others non-technical.  Some days there may be both.

b) Post only non-technical entries on this blog.  Technical entries will go on my MSDN blog.

c) Post only non-technical entries on this blog.  Create a separate blog for the technical entries. 

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