Posts filed under 'Photography'
Crackle… Is anyone there?…
Is it really mid-April?! Blimey. What changes have remained undocumented here in my blog? Not much really. Just a complete change in my lifestyle, an imminent change in my location and untold other little things along the way. Lets start with the main one.
The Plan™ has been achieved. Not the way I intended it, but I’m not complaining. After spending the last 6 years trying to escape the unfair pigeonhole of new media and be recognised as a print designer, in February I found myself on the receiving end of a redundancy as the company I worked for closed it’s print department.
Downheartened? Yes. Disappointed? Not really. My interest in my design career fizzled out almost two years ago and this was the kick in the arse I needed to take my burgeoning photography business seriously. I considered getting another design job for about 30 minutes. I considered throwing myself into a serious freelance design career for about a day. In the end I know what I have to do to achieve my dream and those things would just get in the way.
So, some careful financial restructuring, a bit of helping/freelancing for previous employers to top up the coffers, and away we go. Ignoring the naysayers. Not worrying too much about the risks. Not looking down.
April 19th, 2007
I love my SLRs. My 20D has been a faithful companion on my daily trips to design studios for a couple of years now. But recently I have been considering the merits of owning a compact camera again.
My old IXUS 400 is now in my Jess’ possession, but I borrowed it for the day. The ability to have a smaller bag, that isn’t a heavy load swinging off my shoulder has great appeal and I even managed to take it out and grab a few shots that weren’t as bad as I expected. The focussing and start-up are painfully slow, but I imagine these and other issues will have been ironed out in the Canon G7.
Yes, the lens isn’t as fast as the G6, and no, it can’t capture RAW images, but it looks great and will be a worthy addition to my arsenal. And I might be more inclined to carry it around with me more often and actually post to Flickr and Blipfoto daily. Shock horror.
Just the issue of the money to buy it with then.
January 30th, 2007
I got my first camera when I was about six or seven. It was a pretty basic Instamatic affair, took 110 film cartridges and had a lens the size of a freckle. And a purple shutter button if I remember correctly. My mother worked on the photography counter at Boots in Hartlepool from the age of 14 until she was whisked away to the Midlands, and she handed it down to me.
From that point on I was hooked. I would take pictures of anything that moved and everything that didn’t. I have a box at home stuffed with pictures of family members, my Scalextric set, my Dad’s constantly changing company cars, etc. etc.
Christmas 1986 brought my first 35mm camera. A new fangled Snappy S compact camera made by Canon. Suddenly, pictures were in focus, correctly exposed and the negatives were full size like proper professional ones! It just made me more determined to capture everything in front of me. And obviously mother was paying for the processing!
My first SLR came a couple of years later from a school friend who had no use for it. It was a Praktica. It was forged from solid steel and was completely manual. It had a light meter built into the top that never told the truth. It was a rude awakening. But it didn’t really replace the Canon until the mysterious world of the school darkroom was introduced to us. And darkrooms are where I spent a lot of my free time through art college and uni.
There’s nothing like getting your hands on the hidden workings of film processing. Having such control over your images makes it very hard to go back to High Street labs. For some bizarre reason, I never considered photography for a career, and so once I moved to London with my graphics degree and started having to earn a living, photography took a back seat in a massive way. I had a jazzy new Pentax SLR camera, but it only came out to play on special occasions. Boots in Hackney seemed to have an uncanny way of mangling all my films, and using pro labs was too expensive. The final straw came with my friends’ wedding when Kodak in Camden managed to process all my film after seemingly dragging it through a dustbath.
The next month I bought a Canon Digital Ixus 400. Yes, there was a level of sacrifice in the quality, and I felt like I was breaking some unwritten law by turning my back on film, but once again I was back in control. I kept the Pentax, but it wasn’t long before I was hankering after a digital SLR.
6 months on and it’s time to send the Pentax to it’s new owner (thanks eBay). I thought I’d feel bad. I know I’ll probably never own a film camera again. I’ll almost definitely never process another film myself. But the expense, time and wastage are the only things I’m losing. Everything else is just nostalgia.
September 26th, 2005
So, I took the camera along to a wedding that I was attending as an invitee rather than an employee. I just really wanted a few more shots for my portfolio/website before I start approaching random couples in a more professional capacity. “Ooh, that’s a big one” and “Cor, you’re not messing about” was the response to my camera from the other guests, most of whom I knew, but not very well.
The ‘real’ photographer was obviously working to a fairly restricted budget, and so after arriving at the church with the bride, taking a few posed shots at the church, a few more at the reception and one frame (!) of everybody there, she promptly buggered off.
Jess spotted the opportunity before I did. I’d already consumed enough alcohol to render me fairly incompetent with the camera and was just expecting to enjoy the rest of the day. But now, there were tables to be photographed, speeches to be documented and dancing to be captured for future embarassment. I swung into action, but to be honest was a bit of a shambles.
“You’ve got some lovely shots” was the verdict in the cold light of Sunday, but I haven’t actually dared to look at them yet. I fear the basics of focus, lighting and composition may have escaped my Mansfield Bitter addled brain.
August 22nd, 2005
