So What Brought Me Into Photography

Many will assume that I got into photography because of the bandwagon.  Over the last few years, there grew a sleuth of amateur photographers.  Everybody you know owns a DSLR and calls themselves a photographer.  Or everybody has a point or shoot or a phone camera at the very least and captures everything from a bathroom sign to the leftover sandwich she ate.


Well, my passion for photography emerged from my early years.  My dad was the type of dad to took pictures and videos of his kids, thousands of them.  I am one of the fortunate kids who have albums and albums of pictures.  My eldest brother had the luxury of being the first kid, and thus excited parents who documented every part of his life.  And when it was my turn, color photography became popular and thus the gadget mania emerged once again.  So at an early age, I appreciated the value of photographs, as it brings many memories as well as provide me an alternative to know about my childhood when I was too young to remember.


Then as I grew up, my brother introduced me to the world of photography, as he himself was an avid hobbyist.  I was so amazed at his equipment back then, and I can remember him blacking out the bathroom so that he can develop his pictures there.  Imagine the time of film, you can still enjoy the magic of developing films into printed pictures.  I joined the camera club in high school.  I was so happy to borrow my dad's old Canon camera so that I could practice my shots.  Back then, having a camera was a luxury.  I focused on black and white photography back then and also learned the process of developing films.  Black and white developing was cheaper at that time too, compared to color developing.


Well, the hobby was expensive and thus, I was not able to continue it.  So, for years, I would use a point and click and for every shot, you'd be pressured to get it right as film and developing costs money.  So each incorrect or blurred shot is money wasted.  It's a big contrast to today's digital cameras where you can keep on shooting.  And if you make a mistake, you can delete and reuse the memory storage for the next shot.


After college and graduate school, I bought my own camera, which is now digital.  Imagine my first point and shoot was actually a very good quality web cam from Intel.  I was into computers at that time, and being in the US for my graduate school, I had access to the best gadgets out there.  I remember taking a trip with friends to Bohol and using my web camera.  That was the first digital photo album I had.


Then as DSLR prices went down and models stabilized, I finally decided to get one.  It was really nice to hold a real camera again, with all the manual settings just like my dad's old Canon camera.  Every photograph you take becomes your own creation, as you play a very important part in the quality of the resulting photo.  Somehow, I see photography as an art now, compared to where I would just capture and document the sights I see.  Suddenly, a photograph is about the feeling, the mood, the experience, and less about the sight.  And maybe, I do have a creative bone in me, and it's yearning to be seen, haha.


On my trips, I begin to find my point and click insufficient.  I get frustrated at the shots I take and I felt they didn't do justice to the place and didn't capture the full picture, which I mentioned before includes the experience.


So here I am, learning about photography once again, and yearning to take better and better photos each time.  Honestly, I wondered how I had forgotten about the basic concepts of shutter speed and aperture, and about lighting and composition.  I guess the world of point and clicks just made us lazy, we never had to think before we made a shot.  So anyway, I had to start from scratch.