Understanding Photography .... my story....

“Photography as artistic expression”

Although I have been taking pictures – most probably since I was about 17, when Aunty Em Gorman handed me a Polaroid camera in Burlingame, California – I was like everyone else. My objective was fairly simple and consisted mainly of pointing my camera at interesting things and clicking away without thinking much more than to record a scene for future reference. Some of my pictures received approval and others were kindly noted as “interesting”.

Many years later, working at Polaroid’s ID group, I was exposed to photography as an art – not through my own work as the technical manager of the group which started “facial recognition” for Polaroid (and subsequently Digimarc), but due to the fantastic array of Polaroid’s own collection which took up entire corridors and all of the walls of the conference rooms.  By then, 35 years had passed since my first snapshot and I was familiar with art as something involving paint and brushes.  The abstract looking things on Polaroid’s walls, framed and with notes attached under each, helped a novice photography buff understand that even with “instant prints”, an artistic rendition that spoke volumes could be made.  These were valuable works of art in themselves!

By the time I was at Polaroid, I had long past “grown out" of thinking of photography as just a way to record images and had changed my opinion regarding the quality of photographs and had assumed that the price of a camera would determine the quality of the output. I was the very proud owner of a rather professional looking Minolta D9000 together with 2 zoom lenses which had cost me a bundle.  Those lenses took me from 28mm all the way to 300mm and I could spot a river snake on the banks as I floated along a long-forgotten river near Bangkok (so could the boatsmen who jumped off the boat, swam towards what was ostensibly dinner, leaving me and my wife floating happily and alone without a captain).

My first digital camera was a Kodak, purchased after I joined Polaroid.  The purchase of this particular camera was to take a picture of a very close friend’s first born son.  He had called me at 7 AM to announce the delivery and I was at Best Buy demanding the most expensive digital camera of 2000 at 9 AM.  As you can imagine, I had not outgrown the “expensive is best” mentality.

The Kodak camera died a few years later (most probably due to my own mishandling than to the manufacturing), and I was camera-less until 2008 when I was offered a consulting job in Boston’s financial district – one with a fabulous view of the old Boston Safe Deposit & Trust building.  As the gig neared its end, a deep desire to take a picture, of the golden eagle which was a wind direction finder, took a hold of me and would not let go.  My girlfriend (I had been divorced for a few years by now) Janet and I had planned a long driving trip to Quebec as soon as my gig ended – and that provided fuel for the fire.  I had to get another digital camera.  It was imperative.  This time, though, the Internet was fully evolved and much camera information was available.  I talked to actual camera sales people, read all the reviews on dpreview.com, and did a lot of note taking and actually holding candidates in my hand!!  The camera of choice (even though the very expensive Nikon D3s which had just come out was a tempting alternative) was the small but David-like Panasonic DMC-FZ 28 ((why can’t manufacturers make up nice sounding marketable names, I will never fathom). It was one of the cheaper purchases in my photographic life – nay, the cheapest – and I was to get to know and love it dearly for the next three years.  Scott Kelby’s set of 3 books ("The Digital Photography Book") opened my eyes to real photography.  I hung onto each word from Yoda (as I termed him), and bought an inexpensive  tripod.  The eagle which showed the direction of the wind and was conveniently situated between the Boston Safe Deposit & Trust and my cube – was mine at last!

My acquisition disorder of “expensive is better” had somehow been cured ….and replaced with “camera equipment disorder”.  This, as Scott Kelby hints, is not such a bad thing.

My attention turned to books – Tom Ang’s masterworks called, together with a half dozen other rather forgettable tomes.  These stayed on my shelf until the other day when I found another fabulous book (Exposure Photo Workshop) in a “Photo Workshop” series (Wiley Publications) by Jeff Wignall. This particular book changed the way my eyes saw the world around me – and more importantly, how I thought about what I was seeing.    So here, in these notes and pictures, are the lessons learned as I once again become a novice in the fabulous world of photography as art.

Although this blog is primarily my ramblings on things I have done with photography, please feel free to comment and provide guidance as you see fit.  On my end, it is my hope that someone starting on this path will enjoy some of the stories I have to tell …and hopefully give and get some pointers along the way as we all evolve together.
[August 8, 2011; 6:30 AM ]