I’ve always found photography to be one of those areas of fascination that is a perfect balance of technical and aesthetic virtues. To learn and practice photography you have to understand just enough technique to be dangerous. Learning a new aspect to your vision or a new aspect of your technical knowledge, invariably informs the other.
I’m sure that one can approach photography from a purely aesthetic and instinctive level, where you discover yourself through a visual education. Or you can come to it from another angle, where you become fascinated with the technical nuances of the tools used. But whatever way your introduction to photography, you won’t spend long in either camp without having to know the other.
For me, my earliest memories of photography came not of photographs, but of cameras. I strongly remember my older brother Len, always having cameras, lens, flashes and other alluringly heavy, metal objects of technical desire. I would play with them on a purely object level, never really caring what they were meant for at that time. I guess that shows that I might always be a designer first and a photographer second. Unfortunately for my brother, my fascination lead to lots of screwed up, misaligned, sometimes broken camera equipment. Just about every time I got my hands of his gear, I’d get something all misfired and half cocked. Ugh. My brother and all of his equipment was my archetype of a photographer and a photographer’s gear.
Over the last 4 years I’ve had a slow progression of confidence in myself as a photographer. Recently, I worked on my most significant photographic project to date and through it I learnt many, many things. Some were about how to interact with people that I’m about to photograph; some were with how to use available light for portraits. But one of the most important things I learnt was being able to say, “I can do this… I could be really good at this”.
Unfortunately, one of the other things I learnt was that my relationship with my camera, my Nikon D70, has changed for ever. I kept fighting with my camera’s auto focus capabilities and poor low light response throughout the trip. And even though I’ve shot thousands and thousands of frames with it until this project I’d never had to use it under pressure. All my previous photography had never been for anyone else’s consumption. What I discovered was that my most reliable photographic tool, my most trusted photo buddy was going to be retired soon… It was time to say hello to my new friend, the Canon EOS 1D Mark III.
