What's your passion? Find ways to embrace the things you love.

I love photographing wildlife from my kayak.

I enjoy photography, so much that it has shaped my life in many ways.  And, although I have had the opportunity to shoot across a wide range of subdisciplines, my preferences always take me back to shooting outdoors.  More specifically, photographing wildlife.

I teach photography as a home business, and one of the things I tell my students is to determine what their passions are.  I tell them to buy equipment and look for opportunities to explore those things that are important to them.  My focus, of course, is photography, but the idea includes all areas of life.

From the standpoint of photography, it means buying equipment that will allow you to step up beyond whatever limitations currently restrict you.  For example, many people own a generic "kit" telephoto lens such as a 55-300mm f/4-5.6 lens that gives them telephoto abilities.  Although this is true, such a lens does not even remotely compare to a good 80-400, 150-600, or prime 500 lens when it comes to photographing wildlife.  The price is often many times what the lower-end lens costs, but the increase in performance is incredible, and your photos will show it.

Since I enjoy wetlands so much, I own kayaks (5 now and counting).  Since I love photographing wildlife, I also own a few good telephotos and protect them while boating with water-proof cases or dry bags.  And one of my very favourite things is to photograph wildlife from my kayak.  The next best thing is to hike in an area where there is plenty of nature, camera in hand, out and enjoying all that an area has to offer.

The problem is finance, as engaging your passions, whatever they may be, will likely come with a cost.  It means planning, sacrificing, and communicating those desires with others.  It also means looking for opportunities to enable those experiences.  You can buy used instead of new.  You can sell unused or low-value equipment as a way of procuring some of the things you want.  There are many solutions out there.

What are your passions?  Find ways to engage them.  There is a lot of joy in that.

Thanks for reading.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I found a black widow spider in a plant pot today

Image
The spider I found is a western black widow spider, one of three species of black widow that occur in North America.  The fact that this one has another red patch on the back of its abdomen above the spinnerettes tells us that it is an immature individual. The one thing that people know about black widow spiders is that they are extremely poisonous.  Their venom is something like 15x more toxic than that of a rattlesnake.  The saving grace is that there is very little venom injected from a black widow bite than what a rattlesnake can deliver.   The good news is that black widow bites seldom lead to death.  You are more likely to suffer nausea, muscle pain, and swelling around the bite.  Symptoms usually last only 12 hours or so.  Death may be a result in people with compromised immune systems or in the very young or the elderly.   In 2018, it was reported that there were 1015 cases of people bitten by black widows.  Of those, there ...
Read more

The passing of a generation

Image
Kathryn's mom and dad with our children, Josh and Leanne. A generation, for North America, tends to be between 20 and 30 years.  During that time a couple will give birth and raise children to see them repeat the pattern as they themselves have done.  Each generation has its own set of standards, values, and ideals based upon their experiences and culture, and some of that is passed down to their offspring.  What changes are the life experiences of the following generation and the new customs and ideals that are blended together as a couple becomes a family. Kathryn's mom passed away a few days ago, she was predeceased by her husband several years ago.  Both of them were the grandparents of my children, the mother and father of my wife, Kathryn.  It was my pleasure to know them and to love them as my own, for to me they were Mom and Dad.  And they were there to welcome my children into the world just as my children were with them in spirit when they left it...
Read more

Hang in there, things will get better.

Image
The Svendsen Family - Eric, Samuel, Leanne, Joshua (top row), Nora, Kathryn, Chanelle, Emma If I could go back, in my mind, to a day in my life when I was really down, it would be nice to be able to see into the future.  If could see things as they are today, with the many blessings that have been given to me, it would give me hope knowing that things wouldn't always be so discouraging.   The message here is we do not know what the future holds.  When things are bad, it is hard to raise your head out of the mire to see beyond the darkness.  There are no guarantees, of course, that things will be better, but I think it is true that fortunes ebb and flow as tides do.  The trick is to see beyond the low points and not be too haughty during the high ones.  I know that, at this moment, things are very good.  What the future holds is unknown, but low and high points are likely in the forecast.   This is why taking satisfaction from the moment ...
Read more