Well first post on the Noodle.
Welcome one and all, and it's likely to be one of you at this stage! I'm going to use this as a place to express all my photo related experiments, frustrations and general explorations. I hope it to be both useful for others and for myself as a kind of diary to see how I progress.
As a way of an introduction, I am very much an amateur photographer. It is true I have owned many cameras, and have taken many many photos but hasn't everyone? I have always found photography an immensely enjoyable hobby. To preserve memories, to remember the way you saw things, or even to look at an old photo with older, wiser eyes and see things you couldn't have seen when you took it. All of this is brilliant in my eyes.
Photography is special I think because everyone can participate. Yes there is gear which costs the earth and we all want it. Yes there are those who are more skilled at framing and have art degrees, but at the end of the day everyone can push the shutter button and come up with something. And who knows, by sheer chance, it might be brilliant. This luck factor, is in many ways why I have spent more and more time with film again. It has all that excitement. Negatives are sent off and you just don't know if you might come back with a masterpiece. I used to, and still do sometimes, get this fantasy in my head that there might be something so good on this film that the developer might keep it for himself!
What I write is not to say I'm against digital however. I love it and use it. I recently got a new iphone (pangs of guilt!) and the photos it can take are astonishing. It's in my pocket at all times and I will probably take more photos with this than any other camera. Film, however, will always hold a special place. For me, it's that old vinyl vs CD debate, and I'm a vinyl man. It's all about character!
To balance my first post, which has been a bit of a mental enema, I attach a photo I recently took in Vietnam with my tiny Olympus XA2 camera and a roll of fuji acros B&W film. It hasn't received many views on flickr, but it's my favourite of the holiday. I was lying on the deck of this boat in Halong Bay with mild sunstroke, but otherwise in sheer bliss. All I could think about was lining this tiny boat up in between the mountains. I waited and waited to get it lined up. Admittedly, it's still not that lined up but there was a degree of planning and concentration to get this. That is what my aim is right now. Slow down, don't shoot everything in sight without a moments thought. Easier to do on a lazy boat ride than in the throngs of a big city but that's what I want to remember right now!
Hope you like. I'll be posting something up again very soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment