Yup, that's actually me.
I'm not quite sure where my interest in photography came
from. I do know that as a child I liked to sketch and draw. I went through
pad after pad of sketch paper. I have even earned a couple of awards for
sketches I've done. It never seemed to be quite enough. I always felt as
if there was something more I could do. I felt as if the sketch was
a blueprint that needed to be built upon. I put down my sketch
pad and pencils. I think more out of frustration than out of a lack of desire. I
still wanted to "create", just not in that medium.
About that time I happened upon a copy of Popular
Photography. Thumbing through it, I became fascinated by the images inside
the magazine.... exotic people, exotic places and exotic views of the world
around us. I thought to myself, "That is what I would love to be able
to do.". I'm not sure if I made the connection between my desire to
create and photography at that time. All I knew was that I wanted a
"good" camera and I wanted it now. The only information I had to
go on was what I could read in the ads in the magazine. I had no clue
what aperture, shutter speed or their relationship were. I had no idea
what defined a good camera from a bad one or good lenses from bad ones or even
what focal lengths meant. I just wanted a camera.
In reading the
magazine, one camera stuck out head and shoulders above the rest, at least in my
somewhat ignorant view. It was the Canon T90. It had just been
introduced at that time and it included all the things that I thought I would
need to take spectacular photos. It "looked" professional,
whatever that meant. It had a built in motor drive, which I just knew I just
HAD to have. It included what seemed like thousands of bells
and whistles that any professional photographer would need. Then I started
looking in the back of the magazine at the ads. I looked at the price of the T90
and my heart sunk. There was no way I could afford a camera where the body
alone was $500.00. So, I set my sights a little lower. I took a look
at the Canon T70. From what my limited experience afforded me, this seemed
to fit my needs and my budget. Not knowing anything about lens quality,
lens speed or focal lengths I chose a package from one of the many mail order
places in the back of the magazine. It included the body, a Canon 50mm
f1.8 lens, a Vivitar 70-210mm f3.5-5.6 lens and the Speedlite 270 flash.
I don't remember much about taking photos with that
camera. I do remember some successes and even more failures. There
really wasn't anything resembling the photo processing minilabs we have now. It was
supermarket overnight processing or it was mail away the roll and wait a few
days to get your prints back. I have very few of those prints or negatives
laying around anymore. Those that I do I wonder why I keep. It was
disappointing to me that I had spent what I considered a lot of money and the
camera wouldn't take good pictures. 15 years ago, the world wide web was
in its infancy. There were no resources to learn and read and study
techniques like there are now. I buried my desire to be creative and used
the camera sparingly for about the next 13 years.
About two years ago, my boss decided to pull out his old Olympus
equipment and photograph his son's hockey games. It was this event that
rekindled my photographic interest. I had someone to share
information and critiques with. I pulled out my trusty old T70 and ran a
few rolls of film through it. But now with the advent of the internet,
there were literally hundreds of websites where I could go and read and learn
more about techniques and basic information. Much to my surprise the
information was actually sinking in. Much to my wife's surprise, I began to
realize that my equipment was inadequate for what I wanted to do, or so I
thought. Around this time, I discovered EBay. It was here I
found a place to get used equipment for a 15 year old system. The manufacturer stopped making
lenses in this mount years ago. If I was careful and patient, I could get
decent quality lenses at prices I could afford. The first purchase I made
on Ebay was to finally get the holy grail of camera bodies to me.... the
T90 I had coveted 15 years or so before. I believe I paid about 350
dollars for the body. The day it arrived I tore the box open, mounted my 50mm
lens and threw a roll of film in the back. The body was fairly worn and
well used but worked flawlessly. After that I began to actually
"learn" to take better photographs. I even enrolled in "The
Nikon School" which was no small feat for a Canon devotee. This is a
one day seminar offered by Nikon. I wholeheartedly recommend taking this
course if your a beginner or intermediate level photographer. It's well
worth the fee, especially the final hour. I think I learned more in that
last hour than in most of the reading and web searching I had done in the
previous months. After this class I continued to search Ebay
for more and more lenses. I think I became a lens junkie out of the necessity
never to miss a shot because I didn't have the right equipment. If I
missed a shot, I wanted to blame myself and not my lack of equipment.
After about a year of shooting with this setup and having
moderate success I began to see that I was missing some shots not because of my
equipment but because of my eyes and my inability to focus as quickly or as accurately
as I would have liked. I began reading and doing research into auto focus
lenses and bodies. The money pit suddenly got deeper. After a
donation in the form of a Christmas bonus and the slow and deliberate sale of my
old manual focus Canon equipment I sit with the auto focus equipment I have
now. There are still items and accessories I want to get. But, I'm
more confident in my abilities to use what I have to get the shots I want.
See my equipment page to see exactly what is in my bag. (For the true
photography geeks among you)