Having come to photography at the ripe ole age of 34 (I received my first real camera for my 34th birthday), I picked it up originally because I was taking shots of my newborn daughter with my point and shoot, and I never felt like the images reflected her as I saw her. I started looking into how to capture her skin tone, her activity, etc etc... and each new technique I learned sent me on a wild photography hunt - using fill flash so I could capture her sitting on the beach without facing her into the sun, for example. Increasing the exposure so I could capture her in so-so light.
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| nikon coolpix, playing w/ exposure |
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| black and white mode, nikon coolpix |
Using the different modes on the point and shoot... until I became frustrated by the lack of ability to take a nice portrait with that blurred background you see with professional photographers. Which brought me to aperture. Which brought me to... my first DSLR.
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| with vivid mode, nikon coolpix |
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| 1st blurred background, nikon d3000 |
The first rush when I took a picture of D., with a blurred (albeit cluttered and not ideal) background, and with a shutter fast enough to catch her in motion.. that rush has never subsided. I love the whole process - setting it up, catching it in the moment, downloading to see what kind of surprises you got, minor editing (I only have iPhoto - cropping, maybe slight exposure adjustments)... and the satisfaction of that one shot that feels like Thanksgiving.
Photography captured me again because it is no longer prohibitively expensive to learn. In high school, my dad bought me a Pentax SLR, and I went out and shot one round of black and white, then gave up, the results were so terrible and expensive. Digital photography can be a hobby that doesn't break the bank, is immediately satisfying, allowed me to do things with images that I can't always do with words. It's something I can fit in to my hectic life - unlike dance, which I need to set aside blocks of private time for, or writing, for which I need solitude.
I'd like to explore some of those internal and external motivations in separate posts, because this is getting ridiculously long. Some first thoughts are:
INTERNAL:
Color
Children
Details
Change
Relationships
Dance - beauty of motion and the female form
EXTERNAL:
Making mommies and daddies happy
Making others see themselves in beauty as I do
