Photography is my passion. I’ve been
shooting photos as far back as I can remember; when I first learned that simply
by pushing that little button, the camera makes a picture! I remember my
grandmother’s old Kodak Brownie Box – no viewfinder, but a little box that
created a mirror image that you could faintly see your subject’s face in, and I
wondered if they ever considered that folks would be shooting scenery instead
of just people.
My own first camera was also a Brownie, but
an Instamatic – a gift from my grandma when I was six years old. No focusing,
no adjustments; just aim at what you wanted a picture of and press the
shutter. Simple and quick! Much to my parents’ chagrin, I could go
through a roll of film in a very short time. When I was about 11 or 12,
I graduated to a more “sophisticated” Kodak Instamatic, which of course didn’t
use any less film than the old Brownie.
In high school I signed up for a photography
class, and one of our first assignments was to make a camera from a tomato
sauce can. Really? After emptying out and washing the can we painted the
inside with flat black paint and punched a hole at the closed end with a small nail. The lid that had been cut off was also painted flat black, and
would act as our film plane. Once our “cameras” were finished we took them into
the darkroom, attached a 1x1 inch piece of photographic paper to the loose lid,
and taped it shut with black, electrical tape. Over the punched hole we placed
another piece of the tape, and our camera was light tight. Now for the
fun part.
Our entire photography class – all 17 of us
– marched outside with our pinhole cameras, found a subject that appealed to
us, pointed our cameras at the subject and lifted the tape that covered the
nail hole. After a count of 15 to 20 seconds the hole was covered back up and
we went into the darkroom to see what developed. Tiny photographs drifted up
from the blank pieces of paper; basketballs, trees, classmates, cars, and a
wide variety of other subjects. Miniature photos – from a tomato sauce can!
I was amazed, and where previously I had simply enjoyed taking
photographs, now I was completely hooked. No, I was addicted!
For my high school classes I had used one of
the school’s cameras, but as I entered college I decided that I wanted a “real”
camera, with all (well, some), of the bells and whistles. I chose a Canon
AE-1, which had been on the market for a while and was one of the most popular
cameras of its day. You could use the automatic settings, like a point and
shoot, or you could override the auto settings for manual ones – and that is
what I wanted to learn; film speed, aperture and shutter speeds. I was making payments on the camera but the
seller let me take home the user guide so that by the time I paid off the camera I would be familiar with the
camera and its settings.
As I walked into the darkroom on the first
day of my college photography class, I noticed a long strip of film stretched
above the door. On it someone had hand written, “Negative thinking taught
here”. I knew at that moment I would love these classes.
Some years ago I jumped into the digital age
with a Canon Power Shot. How glorious it was not to have to pay for film and
developing, to see the photos instantly, and simply delete them if you didn’t
like them. My little Power Shot however, while great for general photos (and
takes amazing macro shots), was more than frustrating for photos of birds and
wildlife. Somehow those critters knew exactly how far away they had to stay to
be out of the range of my lens. In early 2011 I finally decided to take
the plunge; I spent more than I probably should have at the time and bought a
Canon EOS 7D SLR camera.
It felt so good to have a “real” camera in
my hands again! But oh my stars, it weighs six pounds with the 18-135 zoom lens
I’d bought to go along with it. A slight bit more than the Power Shot. But it
presented me with a most amazing photo of an Osprey in flight on my way home
from the camera store, and as I did a “happy dance” right there on the side of
the road I knew I’d made the right decision. Yep, eight frames per second will definitely get the job done! Five years later, the camera has
paid for itself and I haven’t once regretted my decision to buy it. My
next purchase is going to be a professional zoom or telephoto lens that is as
big as my car – and will probably cost just about as much.
Over the years I’ve learned a lot about
myself and how I see my world, and about photography in general. I’ve
discovered that I love the play between light and shadow, I’ve learned how to
create a great composition, how to “see” what the photo might look like before
I press the shutter. I’ve followed all of the rules and have broken every one of
them, and I've learned how to take photos that reveal who I am as a
photographer.
I’ve been asked many times what my favorite
subject is, and I have to answer “everything”. It’s not a lie, I do shoot
everything: scenery, wildlife, portraits, flowers, birds, clouds, leaves, bugs, still
life (not only flowers and fruit, but vegetables, food and kitchen utensils),
absolutely anything and everything that is available to shoot. In the past few years I've discovered that
everything I look at, I see as a photograph. Even though I don’t consciously think
about it, my mind is secretly composing pictures. I'm rarely found without my
camera, so I guess you could say that I truly do live, eat and breathe
photography…
