Nicholas O’Toole

My Photographic Journey so Far

I first picked up a camera in my youth while traveling the US. While I was on this trip I began to appreciate the natural beauty we are surrounded by and the variety of landscapes and wildlife that are present in the world around us. With my point & shoot camera in hand I took it all in and really began to appreciate photography for the first time, capturing bald eagles, waterfalls, and everything else that caught my eye. After returning from my trip my love of photography stuck and my point & shoot camera became a necessity whenever I was going on trips. At this point I mostly focused on animal photography and was interested in waterfalls and landscapes but wasn’t really sure how to properly capture them so I stuck with what I knew. Eventually as I became more experienced with my camera I begun to look at my dad’s DSLR with increasing interest as it seemed to be a bigger and better version of my point and shoot camera. I was allowed to use it sometimes, provided the neck strap was on of course, and found that I really didn’t get any different results with the DSLR than my own little point and shoot and at the time I was confused why that could be, considering I had a much more expensive and high quality camera in my hands than I was using before. For awhile after that while growing up, photography continued to be a hobby for me but I didn’t see it as anything more than that until I was graduating. Around that time in my life I had just made the decision to stay with my job instead of go to college as I believed in starting a business of my own and didn’t particularly care for the idea of college. So I worked and saved up, and began thinking about what I enjoyed doing and wished to share with the world. After I had thought about this question till my head hurt, I put it off to the side for awhile as I determined I still had more saving to do before I considered pursuing my passion full time.

A couple months later Christmas was around the corner and I just happened to see some beautiful photos of the night sky and thought to myself “oh this must be digital art because no-one could take pictures of the night sky like that’” so I searched for pictures of the milky way online and was amazed to discover that these were indeed pictures that people had taken using long exposure and it was possible using a only a DSLR camera and a tripod. The very next night I had borrowed my dad’s camera and was out under the sky, taking photos of the stars for the very first time, and I loved it. I had always enjoyed gazing up at a clear night sky and wondering what may be out there in all the cosmos, and being able to take a picture of that sight and share it seemed something closer to science fiction than fact. I quickly learned that when stars are involved, brighter is better and got my first ‘fast’ (low aperture) lens shortly after. This improved the quality of my photos enough to convince me it was time to get a DSLR of my very own. So I looked around and decided on a Canon Rebel t6i as the DSLR my dad had was an earlier Rebel model so I was already familiar with its operation. When I first opened my camera I read through the entire manual before even turning it on to make sure I knew everything the manufacturers might want to teach me about the camera. With that out of the way I began to shoot in earnest but I quickly learned that capturing a scene properly took some planning and learning. To properly capture the stars one must be comfortable operating in manual mode, and even though I had been shooting on my dad’s DSLR for a month, I still only had a rudimentary grasp on manual mode, I could use it to shoot the night sky effectively but that was about it and during daytime shooting I found myself switching back to auto mode. I decided this would be the first goal of my learning and quickly dove into the manual settings and what they each did for the picture composition. As soon as I started learning the fundamentals I challenged myself to shoot only in manual mode no matter what I was photographing, to really test and develop my knowledge and application of the skills I was learning. Once I was proficient in this is when I really started to see photography in a completely different light. I saw depth and complexity in not just the taking of the photos but the processing of the RAW file as well that gave my work a much more artistic feeling than just simply taking a picture in auto mode did and also gave me much more control over the final outcome of the photos through scene based setting changes such as a high aperture for a wide depth of field or a long exposure during the daytime for silky smooth waterfalls and rivers. The more I knew about manual exposure settings and the editing of raw files the more my photography grew and my capabilities grew along with it and I expanded to shooting landscapes with Milky Ways and daytime landscape and nature shots as well.

As I worked with new scenery and skills I began to delve deeper into learning about astro-photography and I wanted to put my newly acquired skills to the test. I learned about the existence of star trackers, mounts that allow you to track the motion of the night sky to take pictures for longer which allowed higher quality star photos. I purchased a star tracker and began using it to take higher quality photos of the night sky. As I learned how to use the tracker I became more adept at using tools like Photoshop and Lightroom to process skies, landscapes, and eventually allowed me to artistically combine photos together into composites. For anyone who does not know, a composite image is an image made by combining multiple real images together into one photo. For example, most Milky Way shots that include high detail are composites as the photographer will use a tracker for the Milky Way and then combine that shot with a photo of the landscape to create the final photo. However I soon learned when backpacking that the tracker can be too heavy to take with me, so I also learned some more portable options to pull the detail out of the night sky. With these techniques learned, I began making artistic compositions which make up much of the images you see on my website today. As I continued to develop these skills further I began to dream about sharing them with fellow photographers so they can create beautiful works of their own using skills like manual shooting, raw file processing, and scene awareness and composition to further everyone’s photography goals no matter what level of photography they are currently at. While I was going through the process of figuring out how to do so, I traveled throughout Europe and saw beautiful landscapes, aerial footage, and magnificent mountains, and captured and composited it all. The additional experience helped me see photography in a new light with much more artistic decision making going into every photo than I ever imagined could be incorporated into a photographic medium.

I began thinking about the best way to share the passion and skills I had acquired with other photography enthusiasts and that is where Camera Clarity was born. For me, Camera Clarity is about helping teach others the same photography skills I taught myself and enabling people to take beautiful photos of their own, being better equipped to make scene and composition decisions while taking their photos and having the tools to be able to form breathtaking images with artistic compositions. If you are interested in learning more about your camera and photography in general please check out the Learning Center to see articles and videos teaching you about your camera and photography principles and techniques. If you’d like to see my photography simply click on Portfolio above to see a gallery of my work. I also offer products with my photography on them (or prints of photos) which you can check out in the Store.