It’s true that beauty is in the eye of the beholder – Margaret Wolfe Hungerford.

As you all know by now I have made a few resolutions for 2018. I already told you about the first one. The second is to actually use my camera that I got a while back and practice taking some real photos for my blog. I used to use photos from google on my Ballerina at Heart blog but that will be no more. From now on, every photo you see is a Claudia original.

Taking up photography is a really cool hobby even if you’re someone like me who has no idea what they’re doing. There is so much to learn about how to take the perfect snap as well as how to edit your photos. If you don’t have a blog like myself, another excuse for taking up photography is perfecting your Instagram feed (not because its important but because it’s fun), or simply creating a photo album filled with all your precious memories.

It’s only been two weeks since the start of the year which means I’ve only been practicing photographing for that long, so I will by no means tell you I’m even close to nailing it. But I do feel like I’ve learnt at least two things since I’ve picked up this camera.

Further down my street

1. The quality really is better

Without knowing how to even adjust the settings or the lens, I can already see how much better taking a photo with my camera really is and I think there is a reason for that. You see, the difference between a camera phone and just a camera is our phones are used for so many other things (yes, obviously. Just here me out). we use our phones for social interaction, and gaming or finding our way around the place and looking up information. To an everyday phone user, our camera is simply another function of our phone and we don’t put much thought into that.

Because we don’t put much thought into it, we take that camera for granted. Nowadays absolutely anyone can take a photo of anything without a second thought. We take it for granted and that’s why you have people snapping photos of their food, and their pets, and taking selfies at the gym or in the bathroom. It’s become that easy (not that there’s any problem with this btw. I still do most of these things anyway).

Then, you take a camera and suddenly you realise it’s all about the camera. You aren’t distracted by any other functions besides taking photos. It’s just about taking the photo and nothing else is important but that photo. You start to think about what you’re actually taking a photo of and how you take it. You focus on the colours, the shade and light. You focus on the subject of the photo and you start to filter out all the unimportant things. You take photos that have meaning and you take a photo with a purpose other than to post it on social media (because you know you can’t do it instantly from the camera itself). That’s how I know the quality of your photos becomes much greater.

2. There is beauty in your backyard

This is something I’ve always known and believed but it came back to me the very first day I started using my camera. It was two days before new year’s and I had retrieved my camera from a storage box, put some batteries in and I was ready to start right away (I couldn’t wait for the new year). However, by this time, it was getting pretty late. Dinner was almost ready so I couldn’t really go out anywhere. I was confined to the perimeters of my house. Unable to wait, I went outside anyway.

Like I said before, with the camera in my hand I was now focused on simply taking some photos and I had to work with what I had. The very first photo I ever took was just of my front yard standing from the doorway of my house. At first glance, it didn’t look like much to me. it’s a scene I was used to seeing every single day of my life. On any other day, I would’ve told you it was pretty boring. But that day, I was looking harder for an excuse to take some photos and that’s when it dawned on me just how much there really was.

I began picking apart my front yard into smaller sections and I could start to see all the beautiful elements it had. The giant gumtree that stretched across the whole area. The many green bushes and the little flowers here and there. The old outdoor table and chairs that we sometimes had breakfast or a cup of tea at on warm sunny days. I drove down the ramp that goes along the front of our house and the next thing to really jump out at me was this little bunch of pretty red flowers, standing on its own amongst the green of the bush. I realised that I drove past these flowers every day and only now did I really see them for what they were… beautiful!

In my front yard

I ended up taking quite a few photos of my front yard alone as well as a couple of my street. Our next-door neighbours have got some more colourful flowers so I couldn’t resist. (I think I have a theme going here). My point is it didn’t take me long to find a few good subjects to take photos of and that was just in my front yard alone. You can only imagine how many things I found on the other days that I left my house.

I think there’s an even deeper lesson that can be taken away from this point and that is that beauty can be found just about anywhere. In your own backyard (or front yard). In the most familiar, or boring of places. In the simplest of objects and most importantly in every human being. If only you took the time to look around wherever you are and point out all the beautiful things this world has to offer. You’d realise how much there is to be appreciative of.

Then again, I’m just an armature photographer, right? What do I know?

Have a lovely day! xx