No images, just holiday musing

Bilsen

Now 8 years into the photography thing I got to thinking about how I got here (wherever that is).

In 2006 I stopped coaching baseball and spending weekends in Nowhere, Georgia and Hell Hole, Florida and I had a HUGE amount of time to fill.

Bought a Canon S3IS and started taking landscape and wildlife photography. Eventually bought an S5IS and continued on that path. LOVED the superzooms but I found the shutter lag to be a pain and the jpg only to limit my PP.

2009 moved to a T2i with the original kit lens and a 55-250 EFS. Also took my first "model Cruise" with Dave Blecman and started down the path of model photography. Joined Mayhem and a couple of photo sites like this.

Rented and then added the 24-105L and 70-200 4.0L IS.

Took the T2i and 24-105 for a swim in the Gulf of Mexico :cry so the T3i and a new 24-105 were called in. This T3i is still my backup body.

Shot that for a couple of years and then bought a used 1D Mk 2 just to try a "professional" camera. GREAT camera with the "L" lenses but weighed a tone and ergonomics were meh.

Last year bought the 70D and found out it can do pretty much everything the 1D 2 can do without the neck pain. LOVE this camera and it is now my camera in chief so I sold the 1D2 for a small loss.

So 8 years later with 250 or so model shoots, plus wolves, wildlife and the Hudson Valley, here I is.

What's your story????

Hackbone

As a young child I always love my dad's Brownie camera. I was thrilled one day when he let me take it and a few rolls of film to a religious pilgrimage involving Catholics from the East Coast. It was very exciting waiting for the prints to come back from the drug store and the next few years I was permitted to photo the family gatherings.

At the same time I was taking acordian/piano/trombone lessons and got side tracked with the music career. We began a polka/dace band when we were 14 and played weekend jobs in the park and as we got our driving license we played later jobs at the Slovak and Italian clubs and got away from the camera. Moved on to college where my roommates dad owned a camera store and re-awakened the photo bug. One of the guys at college was taking lots of photos of "purty" girls and got me involved in the dark room side of it. I became interested again, imagine that. Purchased a Nikkormat with a 1.2 (ooohh ahhhhh) and a Vivitar tele. Still I was playing in a rock band by that time but I had opportunities for photo adventures.

Graduated from college and move 300 miles from home and guess what, started another dance/club smoothie type band and played every weekend as well as started my career teaching band in a rural middle/high school. Two years later got married and still playing weekends and never home. The wife wanted me home more so I sold the old Hammond Porta B (boy I loved that thing) and called up the old college buddy and his dad had a Mamiya Universal 6x7 for sale. Got another lens and a few backs for it and started doing weddings for some of my teaching friends.

One child later we set up a small room as a studio shooting space and started being a portrait photographer. HAH!!! Started doing quite a few weddings so I stepped up to an Mamiya RB67 for portrait work and even hauled that sucker to weddings. As a result of that beast my left arm is still bigger than my right. Moved the in apt studio to a second floor location downtown and considered myself a portrait photographer. Started taking classes from photographers I admired and stepped up to a couple of Hasselblads and retired the RB.

I have a great wife and she supported me in photography so we purchased a small house that was in horrible shape and I rebuilt it into a studio on the highway. Figured it would be a part of my retirement plan. My oldest daughter was only 13 but boy could she pass shingles to me. She helped me redo the entire roof, and I only shot her once by accident with the nail gun.

I was still teaching and doing photography practically full time and was never home. When I was it was wedding negatives all over the living room floor trying to match up prints from the weekend wedding and numbering them and carding them.( any old timers remember that?) Eventually it became obvious the school system didn't want a band director full time as I was teaching some math and reading so I said goodbye to the establishment after 33 years.

About this time digital was starting to become the soon to be preference so I had the Nikon glass so I went with the Fuji S 1 and later the S2. What a great color sensor those cameras had. Even had a micro Cf card.......one that spun until you dropped it and it stopped working. Got involved with a bunch of photographers down in Lousianna and switched to Canon 5d's then the MK II's and now the 7d MK II and more glass than I need.

About 90% of my work is seniors with the rest being some commercial and portrait work. At one time I was doing about 120 seniors a year but our little town is very poor economically and has gone from two photographers to last count 15 all but one being part timers so the slice of pie has gotten smaller and the economy struggles. This will probably be the last year for the studio or by next Christmas for sure as I turn 65 in March and would like to work on projects I love a bit more than seniors. Some sports stuff and pinups with a dash of commercial. I can do all of that without a formal studio so I guess it was part of my retirement pkg. All in all I hated it all as I had toooo much fun and time passed tooooo quickly but I would do it all over again.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Oh, by the way, Merry Christmas to all.

divamum

Got my first film camera as a teenager (Pentax ME Super) because I wanted to shoot my friends at the horseshows I attended. Enjoyed it, but never really learned the technical basics, and just relied on aperture-priority. Had the 50mm it came with and a Tokina 70-210. The entire kit was stolen in a burglary when I was a grad student at conservatory - I was heartbroken to lose it, but didn't replace it. Just used a cheapie 35mm point-and-shoot and/or disposable for a few years.

Scroll forward 5 years and I decided I wanted an SLR again. Wound up with a Pratika which I HATED because it was so damn hard to focus accurately (much harder than on the Pentax!), and eventually traded it in for a Canon EOS 1000fn (which I believe in the US was the first Rebel). I enjoyed it - even though I was still shooting Av all the time! - and even invested in a second-hand enlarger and developed a few rolls of my own now and then.

But then along came digital, and I got a point and shoot - perfect for pix of my then-toddler, and it wasn't until I dusted off the film camera a few years later that I realised how much I missed having a dslr. Eventually took the plunge with a Rebel XT in 2008, which is about when I started posting here at dgrin (according to my profile I joined here in 2006, but I didn't post until much later - I think I used the site to research purchasing).

Never intended to do more than continue to enjoy snapping pix of family and friends, then 2009 happened and I found myself with an entirely empty professional calendar as my operatic season collapsed under the weight of company bankruptcies and cancellations. OUCH!! Suddenly had a bunch of time on my hands and decided to take advantage of it by shooting. Sat in on the studio lighting class at the college where I teach in the music department. Got asked by friends to shoot some performances and, eventually, headshots. Kept working on technique (largely thanks to people here at dgrin), and next thing I knew, I was taking money for it and had a little sideline business. More thoughts on how/why that happened in this blog post.

I'd say 90% of my shooting is headshots and occasional performance shooting, although I've also done family and engagement sessions, and even a couple of weddings. I enjoy all of it. Still Canon, with a 5dII (longing to upgrade to the III) and my old 7d mk I as my backup. Bag full of glass. These days, I don't feel like gear holds me back as much as SPACE - I think I'd experiment with a lot more studio lighting ideas if I had more room here at home to set up and spread out!

Tinstafl

I am kind of like you guys too. I started helping my dad as the voice activated lightstand. I could not go far as it was still corded to fire though. I think that it was just a way to get me to go as the times I did not go, he had it beside his camera for the weddings he was shooting. There were more posed formal shots then the stuff in the reception then and we only did a few of the reception. We were shooting 4x5 at the time. I then remember getting to spend a lot of time in the dark room after each shoot. Then I would be able to take a few portraits of my brother or sister.

Then I got a Maymaia Sekor 35mm with a 1.2 lens and a split focus screen. I shot that camera in High School for the paper as well as some shots for the local paper and then all the way thru college. I finally got enough money for Nikon and a few lens and went on a landscape shooting time as well as family events and friends weddings. I guess I did not realize where i was heading. Then I found that I did not use it for a while. It was probably too much work and too much time spent on family and kids and of course I took up sailing and boats were expensive.

In 2002 I bought my first motorhome and my stepson got married. I took my camera stuff out and my wife was a bit shocked as it came out of the closet. Where did you get that stuff. Well, I said over a long time. So, we left and went to the wedding. I took some pictures and boy was I glad I did. They had cheaped out and got a poor photographer who did not really know what he was doing. When I say the pictures, I laughed. He had his sync speed wrong at a late afternoon wedding with a flash. We had that dreaded black bar across the bottom or side of every picture. So, my pictures that I set up the groomsman for and th bride and her bridesmaids were added to the few salvaged pictures we could fix, but that was a few months later aft i had seen mine and was happy with them.

We left the wedding and headed to Yellowstone. It was our first trip in the motorhome on our return cross country trip. I was in Yellowstone and my camera broke. I could not believe it. It was my companion for many years but it just died. So, I went to the closest camera store in Jackson WY and looked at what they had. They had a D100 Nikon digital and I said sure. It was 150 bucks more then mail order but it was there an the last one. It was not pretty but it was freeing. I had 24 rolls to develop and here I was with my first dslr. I think I took 7000 pictures seeing how all the settings worked. Well, I got more and more into shooting and went fromJPG to raw finally and then the first grand rolled around and I figured it was time to step up a bit. Took a few classes and then spent a lot of time working and trying new things. Now on my fourth and fifth camera and found that they will pretty much match my old film days and even is more versatile with the WB meaning no film changing and no more yellow inside prints. I do miss that kodachrome look though I shoot more TriX in my life then anything.

alaios

Hi,
guys very precious what you shared.. my story with my first camera is so sad that I do not even want to explain it.. At least these days I can understand better what went wrong.

Regards
Alex