Since starting my painting blog last year I feel like I’ve been putting my photography too much on the back burner. Everything I read about blogging says I need a focused and to the point site, but to me, photography is still very much to the point when it comes to my art. My first blog was actually a photography blog that I cannibalized and turned into this painting blog. With that in mind, I’ve decided to add another post each week featuring my photography.

 

 

I love photography. I’ve loved it since I was a 10-year-old kid with a red plastic film camera I earned through some school spelling fundraiser thing. It was a cheap camera and I didn’t really know what to take pictures of but it was exciting. I’d use up my film and impatiently wait to get my pack of developed photos back from the photo lab at the grocery store.

 

 

In my senior year in high school I took my first photography class. Digital photography was now a thing, but classes still mainly dealt in film. My grandpa had recently jumped on the digital bandwagon and gave me his old Olympus film camera to use in the class. I loved that camera! It was my first taste of SLR cameras and I absolutely fell in love with the possibilities it opened up for me.

 

 

Unfortunately, I only caught the fading tail edge of the film era. After my second photography class in college, I couldn’t find anywhere to develop my film let alone buy it. And of course I didn’t have the funds to set up my own dark room. My Olympus sat unused and my photography stalled since I couldn’t afford a digital SLR.

 

 

I gave point and shoot cameras a shot since it was all I could afford, but they just didn’t satisfy in the same way. Compared to my Olympus, they were low quality, tediously slow, and generally found lacking. So I bided my time until I could afford a “real” camera. I bought my first DSLR in 2011, promptly filled several hard drives with photos, and never looked back.

 

 

There was definitely something very special about film photography that was lost with digital. With film, you took more time with your shots, you spent more time composing and making sure your exposure was correct. Then in a dark room there was a sort of magic that happened when you developed the film and then the image on paper. Sometimes I really miss physically manipulating the image with my hands. Computer hardware and software has really come a long way, but I’m more of a hands on person in general. Thus the reason I’ll never get into digital art beyond what’s necessary for photography.