sounds simple yet difficult

After three years of pondering and saving up cash bit by bit, I finally made the plunge to get myself a DSLR camera. Braving the attempt to go into photography after having been captivated by the beautiful photos I see monthly in my National Geographic subscriptions. I always ask myself, "How do these people capture such photos?". Some of them being the simplest of a person's smile, or a simple landscape, yet it leaves you staring at the picture for a long time as if the picture reaches out and captures your heart and attention.

So after three years of saving and pondering, I decided I could spare a little over two and a half grand on a DSLR to start off before I venture into getting different lenses and the works.

Starting off isn't difficult once you have read about the camera functions and how you can tweak the settings to get the desired photography effect. The difficult part of snapping a captivating shot is more about knowing when to find that moment - right now, I am still not really getting it yet.

I thought maybe I can start off with the simple pictures - abstract of pictures of objects and then move on to portraits. Abstract and objects are not too difficult as the arrangements and the framing of the shots are all up to me. But portraits are quite different.

Here are some samples of abstract/objects shots that I found quite satisfying.

I wouldn't go as far as to say my shots are award winning but I can at least look at them and tell myself that it looks soothing and it almost tells a story to the viewer.

But when I tried to get my hands started on portrait photos, I just seem to miss the mark and fail to capture the moments. Even if I do, it one way or the other misses out on the X-factor. What frustrates me most is the fact that simplest of things become the most difficult part of photography.

You are probably thinking if I am trying to confuse you but I am not trying to kid you. A simplest of shot like a smiling face can become one of the most of the challenging shots you can attempt to take. I used to think it was all about, "Say CHEESE!!" when in fact it is more than that. Trying to capture one's face is all about the emotions written in the person's face and the image the object wants to project. Most importantly, it's the natural feel I want to capture in the persons' face, yet I keep failing.

Maybe, maybe, it's really the simplest things in life that become difficult. After all, we are so caught up in the fast paced motion in our lives that it gives us the notion that everything else doesn't matter. And we finally get to seat ourselves down and do the simple things in life,something like eating breakfast on a Saturday morning can end up being difficult. I don't mean eating becomes literally difficult but you find yourself so used the fast paced routine that you gorge your breakfast so quickly that within a time frame of 15 minutes, you find yourself staring at an empty plate and realise that you had plenty of time of time to enjoy your breakfast yet you got into the routine of chucking it down your throat.

From the camera experience to the life's experience, I came to a conclusion that as much as something can sound simple, most of the time it is the things that sound simple that end being difficult..............