Note: This is from my old blog so if you’ve read this before, feel free to read again if you find me hilarious. Pat posted how he started with photography, so I figured I’d share my version.
I’ve wanted to be a photographer since I was in high school. I made my parents buy me my first SLR film camera for my 18th birthday. I had no idea what I was doing but that didn’t stop me from taking blurry, underexposed pictures on a daily basis. I didn’t even know what underexposed meant. One day, I was in a bright and shiny kind of mood so I brought it to a friend’s house and they were really impressed with my little SLR camera. They were snapping pictures left and right, having quite an amazing time, and then preceded to drop it on the ground, in front of me…it landed next to my feet. In my mind I saw this in slow motion and thought, “NOOOOO”, but out loud I shrugged it off as an accident and swore it would be ok. Well, it wasn’t and I’m still mad about it! From there on, I was just a broke, non-camera owner teenager. I couldn’t afford another so I shoved my photography dreams in the back of my mind.
Years later, the photography fairy definitely had my back and hooked me up with a prospective male friend. She sprinkled sensor dust all over me and sent me on my way. Today, I call that male friend Patty O’Brizzle. He not only had a camera when I met him but he had a REAL camera. “Oh, the possibilities”, I thought! There’s a but here though, he didn’t want my grubby mitts messing with his camera all over town. Rude if you ask me. For a long time we went out on photography excursions and I was camera-less. How depressing.
Then one amazing day, he started talking about upgrading and trading in his camera. Oh, no no no I thought. I have dibs! Without reservation he handed it right over to me. I still use this camera to this day. I started out taking one picture a day around my house and I haven’t stopped since. Everything I know about photography is because he taught me around our house. We took shots of pretty much nothing but I learned everything. We tried taking pictures in the dark; we tried light painting, we took pictures of my dog like crazy and even took shots of just my feet. There was nothing fabulous here but it was fundamental to my growth as a photographer.
The point of my story is, to get better, it doesn’t matter what you’re taking pictures of. Just take a picture of anything, learn composition and play with your settings. See how things change in different lighting scenarios. You will learn your camera settings like the back of your hand and one day become amazing, famous and rich…oh wait, these are my secret dreams for myself.
Here are a few of my pointless pictures to prove they really were of nothing.
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