In The Beginning
I am backdating this blog to around the time I “think” the thoughts began to occur to me. As of about the first of the year I made the decision that photography would not be just an advanced hobby of mine. I am/will be making a foray into being a professional photographer.
I got my first taste for photography back in the 4th grade when I was selected to participate in the Twin Cities Institute for Talented Youth program. A summer program in between grades. One of the main focuses of this program was shooting, developing and printing b&W film. Using a school issued medium format camera with a fixed lens we went all around the Minneapolis area exposing film. I have zero prints or negatives from that time … but needless to say … a very exciting time of my life.
I got my own film camera in 1981. Watching the ads from week to week I finally made the purchase of a Canon AE-1 kit from of all places: Montgomery Wards. Besides the body, it came with a Canon 50mm prime, a Canon 2x teleconverter and a “Toyo Optics” 200mm. Later I would add a Canon 28mm, a Sears 135mm (found at a garage sale – loved that lens) Vivitar flash, close up lenses . Not a huge amount of gear, but it seemed to fill the need I had at the time.
Shooting sports and other events in High School, vacation and wildlife photos were the norm. Delusions of grandeur of one day working for the likes of National Geographic but my work was not all that great.
Between my junior and senior years of high school I took my first college extension class in Photography and that was a pivotal point for me. Honestly, up until that point and time I was using that sophisticated SLR as basically a point and shoot with interchangeable lenses. The instructor did an excellent job of pointing that out.
He really made me take a step back and really see what it was I was trying to accomplish. That is when I learned all about composition. Filling the frame and composing the shot with a lot of thought and detail before exposing the film.
A few years later, and after the shutter started giving me troubles, I made the decision to upgrade my camera body. However, as many dedicated Canon owners soon found out – to upgrade to the newest body – you couldn’t bring your lenses with you. Canon in all of it’s infinite wisdom chose to change the mounting style of their lenses making all old lenses useless on new Canon bodies.
Did the best I could with the shutter issue, wound up trying a few digital point and shoots but really fell out of love with photography. That is until I obtained my Nikon CoolPix 950. I took this camera to the Grand Canyon with me in November of 2001. The things I was able to do with this camera were phenomenal. I still missed my SLR but I could make full 11 x17 prints in spectacular color and depth with this camera. The photography bug bit me again.
The Coolpix served me well, but with adoption of some children and a move to the northwoods of Minnesota it just couldn’t do everything I asked of it.
In December of 2004 I got a Christmas present for myself. A Nikon (sorry Canon – Nikon hasn’t changed lens mounts since the 40′s) D70s dSLR with a 28-70mm zoom and a 70-300mm zoom. In my next post I will go into a little detail about first impressions and details with this camera.
