About Photos

(Mostly technical stuff here. Check out About Book for more general info or look the pictures specific info like date and place taken etc.)

I started taking photos only in B&W, then after a few years I shifted to color (neg and slides) as well. I used any type of film I could get my hands on. Whatever was in the bargain bin, I would take it, no matter how old or grainy the film was. The same went for developing. If I couldn't do it myself then I found the cheapest place in town, no matter how bad their reputation was. Sometimes my images came out green or with stripes, but I didn't care.

As long as I could take photos I was happy, and over my ten year period I took about 64,000 of them. Actually, once I had taken the photo, I felt satisfied and didn't even need to see it developed, much less printed. Sometimes I'd have boxes of undeveloped film sitting just around because I was too busy taking photos.

And once I did develop them, they'd get relegated to the closet or under my bed. Many of my images have been lugged across the Atlantic ocean several times and the extreme humidity expansion and contraction they underwent during the flight has also taken its toll on them. For a while I had Kodak helping me clean up the mold and stuff on my images, but I got bored. I'm hoping to eventually get them all scanned into digital images so I can preserve them better.

As for equipment, I'm not big on paying much attention to it. For the first two years I only used one 50mm lens. And during my whole photographic career, I've used the same 30 year old camera I bought off my uncle for $200 bucks. It's a great Nikon FE2. I now have a 35-70mm zoom, a 28mm, and a little flash. All told, I've spent maybe $400 US on my photo equipment.

Once, I bought a supper fancy Cannon and lenses for $4000 US so I could be like the pros (I was one after all), but I returned it after a week. I took just as good photos with my beat up Nikon and I didn't have to worry about it getting scratched or stolen.

Some people can really work their equipment to make beautiful photos, but for me it was always about the feeling I got when taking the photo. The technical aspect had very little to do with it.