f/11. Hold it steady.

I have an idea. Maybe a crazy one and maybe bad, but I thought I'd throw it out there and see if anyone else thinks this would be interesting and fun.

I've been participating in the Exposaroonie challenges for a couples of months, which has been fun, but they seem to be on vacation and a larger issue is that there isn't a lot of feedback. You submit your picture in that week's theme and people vote on the one they like the best. It is pretty non-threatening, but I feel like it would be very helpful to know why something works and (more importantly) why not. Other groups I've seen are too big and the participants are so much better than me that I am immediately intimidated and don't even try. Have I mentioned that I am a bit on the shy side and easily intimidated?

So. I was thinking if there are others who are interested in improving their photographic skills, we could create a group blog to share photos, constructive criticism and information. As I've thought more about this a couple ideas have taken shape. I like the use of themes, both technical (aperture, exposure length, black and white, etc.) and thematic (portraits, flowers, buildings, etc.), but rather than do one per week, maybe do one per month and post photos once a week (or more) so we could try different things or improve on what we've already tried. My other thought is rather than posting photos in a vacuum, we could talk about what inspired the picture, the settings used, any editing that was done, etc.

Anyone interested?

The title of this post, by the way, is from Walker Evans. This past Monday PBS aired "Documenting the Face of America: Roy Stryker and the FSA/OWI Photographers". A painter (whose name I did not catch) really wanted to learn photography, Walker Evans was getting into a taxi, about to leave on one of his trips for the FSA, the painter cried out, "Please Walker! Tell me just one thing about the camera I can use!". Evans replied, "f/11. Hold it steady." I think that would be a good title.