where there’s smoke there’s forum fire
How long have you been interested in photography? How did you get your start? Who influenced you? Are you paid for your pictures? If so, what kind of work do you do? Any goals or regrets?
Feel free to answer any or all of these questions...or none of them :)
app 30 years
While in School saved money to get a Canon AE1 with a couple of lenses
My uncle, who happens to be a mayor canon fan, but I escaped his influence
Some times, but it is mostly a hobby
I work in Photographic retail
My goal is to improve my skills, incl my computer editing skill
Pete
Cool, thanks Pete.
Jessi said:
How long have you been interested in photography? How did you get your start? Who influenced you? Are you paid for your pictures? If so, what kind of work do you do? Any goals or regrets?Feel free to answer any or all of these questions...or none of them :)
I've been interested in photography for 4-5 years, although I didn't actually get my first DSLR until about a year and a half ago. I was looking for a cheap D40 at the time, and my Dad had an old one he was planning to give to my not-so-interested-in-photography Mom, so he sold it to me for cheap.
That in mind, my Dad was definitely the person that inspired/motivated me. He has always had cameras around me and has a plethora of books that have been great resources. Plus, he's always been there to remind me that once you have a consistent source of income, you can afford prettier, shinier things.
I've never been paid for pictures, although I am working on getting involved in periodicals and newspapers in my campus, might as well use the resources I have right now to be able to get some stuff out there. I really take pictures for fun... I've never regretted having something to look back on.
I've been interested in photography for about 25 years,
My first true camera was a Pentax Super A which i got for my 18th.
I was influenced mainly by my dad, he started with a Pentax S1A & Pentax MESuper.
(He dosen't know it yet, but he's getting all my old D100 Kit at Christmas.)
Am i paid, Nope. Totally amateur. My work is in Railway Signalling Engineering.
Any goals. A few. Trying to improve my astrophotography for one, the skill is not in taking the photo, its the processing. Especially when you deal with exposure times from 30mins upto Days!!
Mac.
I started in 1970 while in the Army with a Minolta SRT-101, and then moved on to Nikon about '72. I shot professionally while in college working for land companies developing the California gold country, the local county office of education doing titles and presentation slides and a bit of work for a local tabloid newspaper. I thought about continuing with a career in photography, but saw a better future in the emerging high technology industry getting started in Silicon Valley.
Along the way I continued to shoot as much as time permitted, but with 50-65 hour workweeks time rarely permitted.
By 1994 I was a consultant having been CFO and CEO of small manufacturing companies and I picked up a Contax G2 for an Italian business trip. I fell in love with the G2 rangefinders and those beautiful Zeiss lenses and got back into photography in earnest until 2001 when the economy crashed and my film budget went to zero.
Then in 2008, while engaged in a good bit of consulting work, a friend showed me his D40 and I fell in love again. By the time I was ready to buy a DSLR the D90 was just out and I've had trouble putting it down ever since. With consulting work slow (the recession) I have plenty of time to get back to photography and I'm thinking about what role it will play in my future.
Influences included the FSA folks, W. Eugene Smith, HCB, Ernst Haas, Pete Turner, Art Kane and Salgago. No regrets. Just wish digital had been available when I was starting out.
I picked it up from my girlfriend. She shoots professionally, but isn't the sort that can be bothered to obsess over the equipment. So when its time to get new gear, I get put in charge of figuring it out.
After a while, I figured I may as well grab a D40 and join in the fun.
What really clinched it for me was low light shooting. I love how you can completely transform something you see every day into something entirely different. For a guy like me that grinds away at a routine, its a breath of fresh air.
How long have you been interested in photography? How did you get your start? Who influenced you? Are you paid for your pictures? If so, what kind of work do you do? Any goals or regrets?
About 50 years (Ouch !)
I started to take pictures of airplanes when I was a kid. No particular influence, except that I was collecting pictures of planes cut from magazines and books. Taking my own was a lot more fun !
Along the years, my cameras have been: Agfa Silette, Yashica TL super, Pentax SPotmatic, Nikomat, Nikon F2 Photomic, Nikon F100, Nikon D100, Nikon D70, and today Nikon D60 and D300.
I also collect old subminiature cameras (About 100 so far). They're nice pieces of "jewelry" and they're easy to store :o)
I have been (poorly) paid for some pictures occasionally published in French and Japanese aviation magazines, but that was totally unexpected and kind of cherry on the cake, which allowed me to buy some equipment. I did my 44 years career as an aircraft mechanic/engineer and photography was not on the menu. It was only a hobby, but a useful one that brought me lots of satisfaction and flying. Now I'm retired and I carry on with the association I lead, restoring old planes and flying them. Great fun and lots of photography involved !
My goals are to carry on as long as I can.
My dad got into photography with a couple of his brothers decades ago. We always had SLRs around the house growing up.
My first camera was an Olympus OM-1 (I still sometimes dream about that viewfinder and the split-screen focus). When my son was born about five years ago I bought a digital P&S expecting to take lots of pictures and not wanting to buy lots of film.
The P&S turned out to not have a quick enough response time for baby photography, so I bought a used D100 and fell in love. My sister had been doing weddings and portraits for a while and invited me to come along as second camera to a few of them. With the money I was making doing weddings with her and portrait jobs she sent my way when she couldn't do them, I preordered a D300 when it came out. I could die happy with the D300. My sister quit when she was diagnosed with a malignant melanoma 2.5 years ago, but still pulls out the camera for fun now and again. I've become the family photographer, though (I'm sure people here know something about that, for better or for worse).
I don't advertise, but when people ask I still do weddings and portraits to pay for my photography addiction.
I got into hpotography through birding. I've been a birder for 3/4 of my life. Once I saw what some of the other birders were doing, I wanted to do the same thing.
I've only been actively taking pictures for about 3 years believe it or not. I've told you all about my first cameras. Slowly as I bird, I started getting into other types of photography. Still not my main thing as birding always will be. However the fact that I now own non telephoto lenses is a big expansion for me.
Besides bird shots, I like city-scapes, especially Seattle. I attempt portraits but still suck at them lol.
The digital age really encouraged me to move forward. I'm just not an analog type person. Film never appealed to me for that reason. I know, that's almost blasphemy in the photo world but that's how it is.
I am so thrilled to be getting so many answers. This is all very interesting to me.
Say Jessi, you didn't answer your own questions?
True Ted...
My interest in photography has been building in my own head for a couple of years, but I just bought a DSLR and started this hobby in April of this year. I liked what I was seeing other moms do with their cameras (online) and the idea of having more control appealed to me as well. I mostly shoot my kids because I am always with them, but other styles interest me as well. Thats why I love NR, we seem to have a little bit of everything.
My dad was really in to SLR photography when I was growing up. He used a Minolta and we always had photog magazines around the house. I absorbed a lot of basics just by watching him lay on the ground or stand on higher things to take pictures and noticing that almost none of his pictures were centered directly in the middle of the frame.
What else did I ask...?
Oh yeah - obviously no one would ever pay for any of my pictures and that is not something I am interested in changing in the future either. I would like to become good enough to be paid, but do not think I would ever want to actually work in photography. Seems like a lot of pressure.
My goal for now is to get a lot better and to somehow find the time to practice shooting outside of my own house and yard. I am really almost too early in this to even know what I want to develop.
I started getting interested in photography when I was midway through high school, a couple years ago. My friend has a D50 (his brother has a N80), I had a Nikon Coolpix 3700 that was nowhere near as adequate when I reached the limits of it. So I went to a D40. My dad was always interested in photography. He has his FM2, and I use it every once in a while just for fun. Interestingly enough, my uncle also gave me another SLR, a Mamiya DSX1000. I take pictures for the fun of it. I don't do any post processing, mainly because I want to focus on shooting and I just am too damn lazy at the time being to learn it properly. I'll eventually learn it though.
And yes, I am the default family photographer, depending on whether or not my cousin is there. He owns a Canon XSi and is my arch nemesis. :D We get quite competitive when we shoot together, in a fun way of course.
And my other cousin owns a Rebel too, but she doesn't really get in the way. :D
I got into photography in 1963 when a neighbor decided to revamp his darkroom, and he gave me all his darkroom equipment. I started out with a Zeiss Ikon that my father bought in the late 1930s. I went to SLRs in 1970 (Minolta SRT-101, then X-570s). In mid 70s, I had a Nikon F that was given to me, but with all the Minolta equipment I had, I sold the F a few years later. I've never considered myself a professional photographer, but I did do some weddings and contract work back in the 80s. No real regrets - photography opened a lot of doors for me, and helped me meet some interesting people. I've chatted with Tommy Lee Jones on a movie set (no-one bothered to challenge my presence until I had been there quite some time) and with secret service agents (again, when not challenged during Carter's inauguration when I followed Carter onto the White House grounds).
A goal is to get back to where I was in the late 70s and early 80s (but using digital now) when I really knew what I was doing.
Interested in photography for about four years...my parents used to be into it so I took a film class with their old Minoltas after messing around with some random digital camera my dad had purchased in 2000. In 2007 I got my D50, and applied what I learned from film to digital. Two days ago I finally ordered my D90.
Planning on being a portrait photographer....maybe weddings? We'll see =)
This is what I have on my website. Sorry it's so long.
I began with a Nikon. An F2 Photomic. A Nikkor 50mm f/1.2. A roll of ISO 400 Fujifilm. My first camera since I became serious about photography. It just happened—one day I was pointing and shooting and the next I was struggling with manual photography. But it happens to every photographer. Though the first day on manual is a difficult one, after a few days of plenty of shooting—and experimenting—one can get the hang of it. And I did.
My first camera was a cheap plastic green film camera which allowed you to turn the flash on and off and create artificial panoramas. It was a basic camera, and my results with it were poor—blurry, out-of-focus, and incorrectly exposed shots. Shooting was not a priority in my life. A few years later I upgraded to the weatherproof Olympus ∞Stylus, a slightly more advanced film camera with zoom, more flash options, and a timer mode. I had a “copycat” interest in photography, since my father was shooting I wanted to as well. With this camera, my photographs improved incredibly. Most shots developed correctly technically, allowing my sense of creativity to begin to develop. But I did not want to stay with film much longer. Soon I had my first digital camera—the 3.1 megapixel Nikon Coolpix 3100. With this camera I made amazing achievements—because I believed in myself. I was proud of myself for being a fourth grader with a digital camera. I took lots of photographs and was a photographer for halloween. Within a month I had mastered most features of my camera. I was shooting nearly daily, and most of my shots were exposed and focused correctly. With this new foundation, I could go farther in my exploration of photography. True style differences show up in my photographs about six months later. I noticed colors and patterns, which showed up in my photographs. I learned to use the basic manual mode of the Coolpix and biased the exposure to get the optimum image. One of my photographs got published in the local newspaper (Dragonfly, pictured above, published in the Lexington Minuteman). But in less then two years I was done with my Coolpix. I had read a photography book and learned that the aperture and shutter speed effect how light or dark an image is. When my Coolpix failed to allow me to change these settings, I was ready for a new camera. So we got out my grandfather’s Nikon F2 Photomic. Overall in good condition, the F2 was mainly very dirty on the inside. Learning to use it was the biggest turning point in my photographic career. I learned to use the camera. Not a camera. The original camera. Though the F2’s only electronic feature was a light meter that displayed the exposure of the photograph, within a few days I was able to take decent photographs of static subjects. During our summer vacation, I took many outstanding photos with the Photomic. The manual features were slowing me down, but they did not prevent my creativity from coming out. But after three months of shooting with the F2, I slowed down. It was not convenient shooting on film, though the results were beautiful. In six months, I received my first DSLR—the Nikon D70. And it left me where I am today.
I got started with SLRs in the early 1960s at Grinnell College in Iowa. they had a darkroom that photo club members could use for free. So I did black and white film and printing. You only had to pay for your own film and print paper; the school provided all the equipment and chemicals. It was great; spend all night in the darkroom then go to an 8am class....
Used a Minolta and some Nikon in those early years, then my eyes went bad and I couldn't focus the darn things, so I dropped out of photography. I was angry and resentful. I didn't even really use a cheapo camera. I just didn't take pictures. But finally about two years ago I got a digital camera that had autofocus. It was a new world for me. This past year I got a "premium" Canon point and shoot, an SX10is and joined a couple of photo groups and have been having a ball.
In College I got paid $ .35 for each black and white photo that I took. I went around campus and took photos of different events and sold prints to my fellow students. I also had photos printed in the year books. That is the only money received for photos.
At this point, I have no desire to sell a photo. My wish is to be able to take good enough photos that my wife and I would put prints of them on our walls AND that friends would look at them and say, "Damn, Nick, that's a great photo!"
Nick V
Wow thanks for starting this Jessi. It's good to finally see someone other than bmxdad and me start a thread around here :^)
In looking over some of the latest threads about cameras and lenses, the idea of a member's background in photography was coming up in my mind. So, if anyone wants to add a story here, I will give a brief outline, but will qualify this with "as best I remember." I think I began in about 1958 with a Voigtländer, purchased a Minolta SR-3 in 1960, and also a Minolta Autocord, Zenza Bronica with Nikkor lenses, and finally a Nikon F in the early 1960's. Had Minox, the one which shot 8mm film, and a Canon 7 with f/2 Leitz Summicron.
In the latter part of the 1960's I used Deardorf view cameras up to 11" X 14" in the studio, when I went to the lead position at a new studio, a couple Hasselblads, two Sinar view cameras and two Nikon F's.
Also, one's darkroom experience might be added in if appropriate. And this is part of my story from the early 1960's as I built my own with fiberglass sink with a little help from a friend.
The story may continue later on as others jump in......
First camera Brownie 127; 1957. Cambridge, England
We lived a large rented house and to my joy, it had a fully equipped darkroom, left by the previous owner . Envoy Enlarger, Patterson developing tanks, Kodak Safe lights
Then a Voigtländer Vito B; Kontur viewfinder; Weston II; lots of filters in separate leather case; separate range finder; a separate lens hood again in its own leather case; and flash gun that never worked
Next came a Leica IIIf f/2 Summicron; 90mm Elmar; 35mm Summilux and a move up to a Weston IV
Started work as a Photographer in the 60s at Cambridge University, Dept Experimental Psychology - Exakta VX IIa, A truly awful camera but it came with the job
I sold my personal Leica for a Pentax S1a. I also had , and still have, a Rolleicord
Move to Department of Machine Intelligence and Perception, Edinburgh University in the 70s using Nikon Fs a 5x4 Mono rail and wide angel Rollie . At the time, most Photographers in the University were using a leica; by the time I left Edinburgh, they had all changed to Nikon
Then on to Bristol University again Nikon Fs
Worked briefly at Ahmadu Bello University Nigeria, Leicaflex
Late 70s Gave up Professional Photography, to to become a professional Balloon Pilot ( set up Bristol Balloons) used Olympus 35mm Mju I must have got through 6 of them, nothing went wrong with them , just did not always survive my balloon landings
5 years ago, sold Bristol Balloons and returned to Professional photography, although now somewhat retired
bought D70 then D90 followed by D700 and Now a D800
msmoto said:
Also, one's darkroom experience might be added in if appropriate.
my Darkroom experiences are definitely inappropriate :)
As with Sevencrossing, I started back in the Jurassic period with a Kodak Brownie 127. I actually purchased with some savings a flash attachment with real, one time use, flashbulbs.
In the mid 1960s, I moved up to Pentax slrs (a Spotmatic)--I was a graduate student after all. I kept the Pentax for a long time, I actually still have it. My use of photography waned in the 1990s as my family grew and there really wasn't much money for film and processing. In 2000, I purchased my first digital camera, a Kodak something, at about 1 megapixel. From there my interest was renewed significantly as kids graduated from college. My first digital slr was a Nikon D50 which I promptly dropped in a stream on a backpacking trip above the arctic circle. After 3 days, it dried out.
I now own a D200, a D700 and D800. Photography is simply a hobby for me, one that I take seriously--its very close to fly fishing in the sense of a suspension of time and space when I am serious about having fun.
Wow. As I noted two years ago, I got into photography in 1963 when a friend of mine gave me his old darkroom equipment. I was in the 4th grade at the time. I did my own darkroom work at home until I went to college, where I took over the darkroom in the Botany/Bacteriology department. In grad school, I used the Botany Department darkroom, where I was able to add Cibachrome printing to my ususal B&W work. I also was able to set up a darkroom at the Savannah River Plant, where I was doing my field work. I stopped working in darkrooms when I went to law school. Never quite got around to using a darkroom after that, although I got as close as converting a bathroom to darkroom use back in the late 80s. I started with digital darkrooms (first, Photoshop Elements, then Nikon NX and Lightroom) shortly after they hit the market. Digital and wet darkrooms are totally different worlds. I prefer the digital.
I started in 1964 with an Agfa Silette, then a Yashika Super TL, Pentax Spotmatic, Nikomat, Nikon F2, Nikon D90x, Nikon D100, Nikon D70, and today D300. I did a lot of self-taught B&W printing, then color slides.
I almost only take pictures of airplanes (Warbirds preferably), static or during air shows.
I don't get paid for what I do. I just enjoy it, especially air to air photography.
I might get a V1 (Or V2 if it ever comes out at the Kina… :o) for the simple fact that my D300 + TC 1.4 + 70-200 get really too heavy and old age doesn't help at all… even with VR !
Almost forgot… I collect sub-miniature cameras and have about 100 real good ones, plus about 100 110 toy cameras. They're all cute and don't take up so much room :o)
Started in college (~2004ish) after my roommate and friend both had Nikon film cameras. I never shot film, but got my first digital camera in college. 3.2 MP Kodak with no zoom. Had that for about a year and upgraded to a Fuji S5200. Got tired of not being able to accomplish what I wanted with that (although for just pictures it worked very well) and got my Nikon D5000 a couple years ago. Never taken any class and I learned everything from my friend, reading, or experimenting. Have no training on post processing either (so if mine is horrible you know why!)
I really started shooting landscapes on hikes in college. I always liked animals which is probably my second most photographed subject (probably only second because I have to find them). Then everything else just came along. I don't take many portraits, but I am learning and getting better at those...I have a new favorite subject that is 5 months old and adorable :)
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