About
I started getting interested in photography at the age of about six years old when I was given a Kodak Box Brownie camera which took, I think, 128 roll film. I still have those rolls of negatives today.
I was always interested in the equipment too and had a string of cameras, asking for a better one whenever I had a birthday when I was a kid, then upgrading as I could afford it when I became an earner in adult life.
My first ‘proper’ camera was a Zenit-E , which I believe was a Russian make, the cheapest SLR on the market at the time, built like a tank and weighing about the same! It was very basic, but served me well, using it to learn about manual metering, focal lengths and depth of field.
I then moved up to a Pentax ME Super, which I upgraded to a Super A as soon as it came out. By this time I had a small darkroom in my bachelor pad, where I developed my own black and white prints. I also tried to develop colour slide film, with less success.
I changed loyalty from Pentax to Canon when I first saw the stunning design of the T90. It cost me nearly £800 in the mid-80′s which was a fortune for me. But this camera was just fantastic to use, sitting in the hand just perfectly. I particularly liked the multiple spot-metering mode, a feature which still isn’t found in cameras today costing many pounds more.
For some reason I lost interest in photography in the late 80′s and early 90′s. I think it was the expense of getting the prints developed, plus a general apathy. For years, my T90 lay unloved inside the gadget bag under the stairs. I should have sold it, but never got round to it. I eventually put it on eBay three years ago (2006) and got £350 for it, along with a couple of Canon lenses. I think it held its value quite well!
In the late 90′s, digital was really taking off but, like any new technology, they hadn’t yet got it right and the quality of the digital image was somewhat lacking and I wouldn’t be persuaded to part with my cash. I did keep abreast of new developments though, and in 2001, I was left a little money from a relative and I decided to get a digital camera. it was an HP PhotoSmart 850. It was brilliant! Although it only had a 4MP sensor, the standard of prints it produced were streets ahead of anything I’d done before.
I was hooked again and my interest rekindled. Soon after, I kept my loyalty to Canon and invested in an EOS 350D, which I still have and use today.
With digital photography comes another skill to be learned – processing. I use Photoshop and enjoy the retouching process as much as taking the images themselves. I have been using the software for about six years, and am still climbing that steep learning curve!
This is so much easier than having a darkroom, messing about with liquid chemicals AND virtually costless! The only downside is that it makes me lazy. I don’t spend so much time in composing the image or overly concerning myself about lighting – The majority of problems can be fixed or lessened in post-processing. I’m not saying all photographers are like this – they’re obviously not. But it does make me lazy! Nevertheless, I do still manage to get some half-decent images with the equipment available to me.
I’m not just interested in taking pictures of girls either! Although I have dedicated this site to my images of girls (because it’s my favourite subject) I do have thousands of shots of other subjects, from landscapes and architecture to still-life, some of which are posted elsewhere on the web.
