Photorehab101 Imagecraft Bootcamp – My First Image

This week in Imagecraft Bootcamp, Mitch ask us to show, explore and reminisce about our early forays into photography. This is cool for some and I have already enjoyed reading other’s tales, however mine will be a little different. Sure we had a camera growing up, it was mostly my Mum who took the photos, I don’t really ever remember getting on the other side until I was much older. The first photos I remember taking were of my pets (My cat Tammy to the left is the earliest photo I actually remember taking), sometimes of friends……….it wasn’t til I was in my late teens that I really took any interest, I took Media at school and this covered photography, mostly B&W………there are some photos somewhere, but I am not sure where. I even saved up and bought a second hand Olympus SLR (I still have it). Photography was horribly expensive and I did not have much available money back then, I didn’t have access to a dark room once I left school; so it kind of slid out of existence. In my early twenties I was young and more into partying and I rarely took any photos, I would go on a binge every now and then on holidays, but that was about it.

My Cat Nougat I got when I was 16

My parents 35 years ago

my 21st, my Dad took me to see the Pandas

My last Horse Buster, I was about 16 – 17 when I took this

Even when my kids were born, sure we took photos on a cheap crappy instant camera, my SLR gathering dust in a cupboard somewhere. I was taken with the tiny world on instant cameras, even had a polaroid at one stage. I took photos, got them developed, sighed at how blah they really were and shoved them in a box in the cupboard……….I didn’t even really put any in albums! If I wanted nice photos of the kids, I took them to a photographer! (Oh the irony)

Then the digital age began, I bought a digital camera………….took a few snaps, nothing overly exciting, got another camera and took a few more snaps on holidays and what have you, used a camera at work for various product shots, again nothing really exciting.The camera was just something you used to take a few holiday snaps, it was not an art form (Boy was I wrong).

Jump ahead to October 2014 (yes that recent), and for various reasons I wont bother to go into I started to write this blog. I started to connect with other bloggers, as you do and started seeing some amazing photos, I mean really seeing for the first time. It sparked my creativity, my imagination, I spent hours looking at some truly gob smacking imagery on the net. I started talking to these people and asking how they did it……….I was not immune to Photoshop, I used it with my job…………..but not like this. I then made the decision that I wanted to do this, I wanted to learn Photography, I mean really learn it.

Buddy

So in November 2014 I bought my First Digital SLR camera, a Nikon D5300 and a kit lens. It stayed on Auto for awhile. I then joined some Photography groups and started to learn. I was obsessed when I took my first really good photos, and then learned how to process them properly. Then I started Photo101 and Blogging 101, and met more people learned more about photography, shot ALL THE TIME, then people started asking me to take their photo. I realised I was actually pretty good with portraits, so I started do more and more, eventually I started asking for money; just to cover costs more than anything. I set up a studio in the garage, bought and made rigging, lights, backdrops, props. Then people started asking me for newborn shots, kids, and I started doing Photoshop fantasy shots, combining my photography talent and my photoshop skills.

Jump ahead a few months and I meet yet more people who have taught me so much, about technique, composition, long exposures, astrophotography, light painting. I am trying it all. My passion and drive piqued something in my husband and now he is almost as obsessed as I am (although he does not like portraits), so we now spend our weekends travelling all over our local area, taking photos, meeting people, making friends. It is a whole new aspect of our life; we have never had so much fun!

So my journey in what I classify as real photography is barely 1 year old, but it has been one hell of a year, now the camera is a natural extension to myself, I feel naked, untethered, unnatural without it. Wow I have rambled on, haven’t I? I will leave you now with a gallery of some pics from the last few weeks.

-Julz

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