My entry into photography

My entry into photography

When I was younger my father spent a great amount of time photographing myself and my brother. Whilst he was not into spending loads of money on equipment or taking 'epic' landscape shots, he did seem to do very well at candid type portraits of my family. He never pushed anything he was interested in onto me, nor was he hugely supportive or supportive of my interests, he kind of just let me do what I wanted - As in whatever I wanted to do that didn't involve spending money.

So I spent my younger years doing generally nothing but watching low quality TV ( Still better than being brought up on a tablet and YouTube though). When I was around Eight I was bought a camera for Christmas and allowed to take pictures of whatever I pleased. This was strictly what I wanted to do as neither of my parents really intervened with it (They were not pushy parent at all, which I suppose played to my benefit). The camera for the next couple of years was a great source of entertainment for myself and it came with me on most trips. All that being said I didn't really have any idea of what I was doing, at the time photography was to me what it is and always has been for most of the world’s population a method of documenting my memories in an instant visual manner. 

Canon Powershot e1 - the first camera I owned

Gradually I lost interest in this small camera partially because of my dad’s stubbornness on the fact that his cheap rechargeable batteries couldn't hack it when it came to this rather thirsty wee camera. This meant that most if any photos I was taking were on the low-quality camera phones of the time. Think iPod touch 4th gen 2Mp photos. Although I still had access to devices to take photos, losing access to my camera meant that I took considerably less photos. The phone cameras did not have the same novelty as a device made for that one job alone. The term 'right tool for the job' really applies to photography. If you have a camera on you, no matter where you are you want to use that camera, especially if it's tied around your neck. Whereas if you have a mobile phone that happens to have a camera on it with you it's easy to forget that you have it with you, since you have your phone with you all the time and most the time you don't have it for taking pictures. 

So from around 2013 to 2016 all of my photos had been taken on a mobile phone, with the exception of maybe one disposable film camera and the odd photo on my old Canon camera. At this point photography wasn't really something I put much thought into. I would critique other people’s photos when I saw them appear, but I did not consider myself a 'photographer' in any way shape or form. From time to time I had also aspired to owning a DSLR camera but usually closed those aspirations with the conclusion that my financial situation did not support them. The turning point comes here when, around august 2016 my dad whaps out this old looking (to me anyway) film camera that had been sitting in his camera bag for the better part of ten years.

I have to go on a bit of a tangent here to explain how I ended up in possession of this camera, considering that my father is not the sort of person to buy things without need and even less to give them away (this isn't a negative thing though). Around 2008 my dad was bought a compact Olympus digital camera, this replaced his mains at the time which were an EOS 650 (on its last legs) and an Olympus mju ii for which he had a love hate relationship with. For those unfamiliar those are both film cameras. Whilst I feel his heart was still with film, he got a good amount of use from the Olympus compact and was still regularly taking photos of the things going on around him. About four or five years later he got given a EOS DSLR camera. There must have been something about that camera that he just didn't like or maybe it was the fact that by this point he was massively burnt out from his work and was enthusiastic for practically nothing. Whatever it was this signalled the end for his interest in photography.

Going back to 2016 he pulled out this Canon Ae-1 Program from his camera bag. This had been his main camera before the Olympus and EOS cameras and in fact I think this was his most used camera going by the fact that he had more than just the standard kit lens for it. So I went onto Amazon and bought a roll of cheap film to try out using it on a holiday I had coming up. Bearing in mind I had absolutely zero knowledge of photography at the time. This meant that I ended up using the camera pretty much like a point and shoot and somehow I still ended up with results (I think I must have had the lens set to auto because I still didn't know what aperture numbers meant or really what shutter speed did). 

The film camera at this time was still a complete novelty thing to me and I didn't really see it as a actual solution to taking pictures. My plan from here was to save up and buy a digital camera if I decided to stick with photography. Since it was still a novelty it took me until passed Christmas 2016 to finish the roll and nearly a year until I got it developed. In the time after Christmas however I spent a great deal of time watching videos on YouTube and getting a feel of how photography worked. 

Since this post is how I got into photography and not 'Owen Jameson's Photographic timeline' I'll wrap things up here. I am still into photography and further details on where I'm at currently will be a future post.