My Addiction To Photography

I started another blog - PROLIXPICS - to think and write about my photography. I wanted to write a little something about my experience with photography and it got, well, prolix. I decided to reproduce it here.

My Addiction To Photography

My mother is a naturally gifted artist.
I regret that she didn't devote more of her time to expressing her talent. If it's ok to switch things around and live vicariously through your mother, I believe that her life would be so much richer today if she had committed the time to developing a life-long body of work that was meaningful to her. Perhaps she did this in a different way. She devoted her time to raising three children. I know it was meaningful to her. I suppose that, in a sense, we do represent her living body of work.

I hope that we haven't disappointed her.

Whenever she set her mind to it, my mother created beautiful things. She had vision and a determination to see projects through. Without formal training she could, in a seemingly effortless way, move among media: paint, charcoal, needlepoint, paper cuttings, baking, cooking, food.

My sister inherited her talent.
My daughter has that talent.
And I have trouble writing my name legibly.

That's what drew me to photography. The camera was a crutch that I could use to overcome my talentless hands. Although I couldn't hold a paintbrush, I had a little bit of an eye. At least I thought I had an eye. And that gave me the courage to try.

I started shooting pictures well before my teenage years. The first cameras that I used were a Kodak Retina II and a Zeiss Ikon Super Ikonta B. The Kodak was a 35mm and the Zeiss was a 120mm rollfilm camera.

The shutters were not automatic. To take a picture, you needed to first "cock" the shutter by pulling a little hammer back to load a spring. It was almost like cocking a gun. They were folding cameras, the lens was connected to a flexible bellows so you could fold the camera back into the body. As opposed to motor drives that allow you to take several shots in a single second, it took several seconds to prepare the camera for a single shot. It was difficult to take action photos. But the cameras taught me to think before a shot, to anticipate action and to find a "moment."

Both of those cameras were rangefinders. There was no such thing as autofocus. What a gift! Working with a rangefinder under pressured shooting conditions required me to think about things like focus, distance, perspective, and depth of field. I still think of those things when I take pictures with an automatic camera today. I don't know if I'm doing anything about them, but at least I think of them.

Naturally, those vintage cameras did not have an internal metering system. Although the best results came from using a handheld light meter, many shooting situations did not provide the luxury of using a meter. I learned to estimate exposure. That was also a gift because training my eye to estimate exposure helped me to develop whatever ability I presently have to see light and shadow.

If you want to learn something about photograhy, then you every so oftern you must turn off the automatic features on your camera. Think about what you're trying to achieve and then set the camera accordingly. Make mistakes. Try things. Take lots of exposures. Review them. Critique yourself. Get your friends to critique. Think about your results, then go back and try again. I'm beginning to think the same way about life.

When I first started shooting, I felt some frustration because I had old equipment and my equipment made it more difficult to take pictures. It's taken me years to realize that these vintage cameras were wonderful teachers. They deserved a better student.

My father bought those cameras in Germany, right after World War II. He claims that he bought the Zeiss for a pound of coffee. I think he bought the Kodak with some cigarettes. I still have those cameras. The Kodak still works. The shutter release on the Zeiss is broken and I'm not sure where I can go to fix it. I want to fix the Zeiss, even though I don't shoot film anymore. It's a thing of beauty and I just want to know that it works. Oddly enough, I don't take those cameras out and look at them very often. It just makes me happy to know that I have them.

Although it was a lot of money, my father gave me the money to buy my first single lens reflex. It was a Ricoh. I couldn't have been happier if I were twins. It had an internal "needle and bracket" exposure meter. Once I understood how the meter "saw" the light, it made it so much easier to adjust exposure. The Ricoh had a screw mount lens. Screw mounts were, in a word, a disaster.

Then I enlisted in the Air Force. The camera didn't make me enlist. There were a whole bunch of other reasons. The Air Force was significant to my photography in that it provided me with the money to buy camera equipment. In my day, most young enlisted men used their paychecks to buy either cars, high end stereo equipment or pay child support. But I used many of my paychecks to buy cameras, lenses and accessories.

I used some of the first cash that I had saved to buy a Cannon A-1 at the base exchange. I loved my A-1, it was one of the first fully automatic SLRs built on a sophisticated electronic system. For the first time in my life, I could afford (not really afford but I could spend money on) lenses, filters, and lighting. It was heavenly. At one point, I bought and AE-1 to supplement my A-1. Nothing makes you feel more like a photographer when you actually have more than enough equipment for two camera bodies.

I bought that A-1 in 1979. It served me faithfully until about 1996. That's when I switched to Nikon.

Since I was a kid, Nikon represented the holy grail in 35mm photography. I was never sure that I would see the day that I could afford a Nikon camera system. However, in 1996, the A-1 was getting long in the tooth, the electronics were beginning to fail, it was time for a new camera. I could afford the Nikon N70. I went for it.

Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. The N70 is a very respectable camera. It just didn't feel like it was the half the camera that the A-1 felt like to me.

Life has a way of playing tricks on you. I always wanted a Nikon and finally got one. Then it was a disappointment.

Life impacted my photography in other ways. My skin reacts poorly to many of the chemicals used in photo processing. I could spend hours in the darkroom only to emerge, bleary eyed, with my hands raw, blistered, and sometimes bleeding. I tried gloves and steroid creams but nothing worked.

My sensitivity to chemicals drove me out of the darkroom. I started to rely on high end labs. I would get contact sheets, pick shots, make editing notes and then head to the local lab. But that was a poor substitute for doing your own printing. It was very expensive. They didn't feel like my prints, it didn't provide the thrill of standing over a pan and watching the image emerge from a blank sheet of paper.

I still loved to take pictures. But the complications, expense, and physical discomfort drove me away from the darkroom. And without the darkroom experience, I didn't have the same passion for photography. And then came digital.

I jumped onto the digital bandwagon right away. Before the digital SLR, I went through a couple of rangefinder-type digital cameras (as much a 2 megapixels!) and started to experiment with digital imagery. Digital allowed me to rediscover the joy of photography. Even though the early photo editing programs were pretty weak, they gave me a digital pathway back into the darkroom.

I stayed with Nikon when I purchased my first digital SLR camera - the D100. I'm glad that I did. I've enjoyed using that camera and feel very comfortable with the interface. I've since added a D200 and a D2x to my collection. And if the stock market ever recovers, the D700 is looking pretty good to me.

I'm currently working on a PC. I've used PCs because my workplace has always favored the Microsoft/Windows environment. But just like Nikon, I know that - one day - I'm going to go for a Mac. And shortly after I buy that Mac, I'm going to buy a printer that allows me to produce true "poster-sized" images.

As a father with a demanding full-time job, I don't have the time that I might otherwise spend on my photography. But the joy is back and from time-to-time life kindly gives me the time and space that allows me to retreat to my computer and become consumed by my tinkerings with imagery.

I love my photographs because they're mine. Please don't misunderstand me. I don't profess to have any kind of a special talent. These paragraphs are just my story. It felt good telling it.

I'm sharing these images on the web because if I can share a portion of the happiness that these images have brought me, then I would hope that I have accomplished something of value. I believe in Jigaro Kano's suggestion that life's purpose is to work on perfecting some aspect of yourself and give back some benefit to the world. Although his suggestion was focused on the study of Judo, that philosophy transcends to all aspects of life. I've waited too long. Now that I'm in the 50th year of my life, it seems time to do something about it.

My images are far from perfect. I often feel like an imposter. There are so many more highly gifted photographers out there. I often see images that take my breath away. I see so many images that possess greater subtlety, more appreciation for their subjects, better sense of light, shadow and perspective. And after being lifted by the beauty of another's images, I descend into a mild melancholy as I only wish that I could be as talented. I fight the urge to feel jealousy and look upon these many talented individuals as my teachers.

Perhaps by learning to see the world through another's eyes,
I can achieve greater consciousness through my own.

My addiction to photography has provided me with some insight about life. It's nothing that you haven't heard before: things aren't always what they seem to be, inconvenience can be a great teacher, make the most out of what you have, follow your inspirations, sometimes you need to turn off the electronics, look at others with fascination. It's just funny that when you hear such things, they sound like trite sayings. When you experience these things, even in little ways, you find meaning.