In the good (bad) old days (why do we have nostalgia for the past anyway) of film I used tell people asking for photographic tips to treat film as though it was free.

Now of course with digital photography and large capacity memory cards “film” is free. The reason I used to say treat film as free is that people take risks and break the rules.

When you break the rules and take risk to experiment most photos may be no good (no problem don’t print them - or look at them) but every now and then you may find that you have taken that picture which is different and good.

The above rose is slightly out of focus and yet makes a decent abstract image. I did not try to shoot it out of focus but was experimenting. It was a point and shoot camera with a digital view finder which as far as I’m concerned forces you to experiment when in sunlight.

This experiment failed miserably. I saw a bee in a red flower. I had the same point and shoot camera in macro mode but it focused on the background and we get crappy out of focus blur.

I love contre jour (french for against the light or back lit) picture. The one above and the next one were taken within seconds of each other. I cropped the photos differently and for me the first is better than the previous.

Finally just a story about experimentation. Many years ago I was on a job in Fort Wayne Indiana. In those days not everyone in Los Angeles, where I live, was fat, but at a beer festival in Fort Wayne nearly everyone had large bottoms.

So I took a whole film of nothing but fat bums (I grew up in England so I speak English as opposed to American). This was an experiment in taking thirty six photos on a single theme of fat bums. Every photo was from the behind and taken from waist downward.

So I was surprised to get a preprinted letter back from the developers teaching me how to take pictures. It said, “Don’t cut off people’s heads!”

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