The Beginning

The best part about shooting pictures is I don’t really know much about photography. I decided to start taking pictures of birds about 7 or 8 years ago. I didn’t know what ISO was or how shutter speed affected the image. I didn’t know much about image editors or making my pictures match a certain aesthetic.

My first camera was an “old” DSLR my mom had lying around. It had a 250mm lens which I used to the best of my ability. But I was mostly taking pictures of birds, which for the most part are really small. The house wren, my favorite bird, is like 2 inches tall. Unless I’m standing right next to it, 250mm wasn’t going to cut it. My next purchase was a 600mm super zoom. This thing changed my world. All of a sudden, my pictures were crisp and I could see the fine detail on the bird photos.

After the lens upgrade, I found I was mainly limited by the capabilities of the camera itself. I went out and bought a Canon R7. I figured going mirror-less would allow me to shoot faster and capture these small little twitchy animals more easily. And with the crop sensor, my lens could zoom very far. I may have been right about it’s best use, but I don’t really remember why I chose that camera. As I began to shoot more and more photos, I learned more and more about the settings of the camera itself. I would watch these long YouTube tutorials about adjusting each camera setting. This is also when I got into photo editing.

Photo editing is a bit of a bottomless pit but I learned just enough to make my bird photos CRISP. Importantly, photo editing allowed me to remove noise. In Adobe Lightroom, this is a simple click of the button. The other editing techniques were also relatively simple: adjusting white balance, getting the saturation just right, changing the exposure to best improve the colors of the birds. I haven’t really progressed much beyond that in terms of photo editing. Which is good, because my next fascination was almost the opposite of my bird obsession.

Retro Friction

For so long I had been obsessed with long lenses and getting the best and clearest shot. In the last year, however, I began to also be interested in the “film feel”. This retro aesthetic isn’t new, as nostalgia for the 80’s and 90’s and early 00’s has been in everything from movies to clothes. I guess the craze infected me because I went out and bought a Fujifilm x100 VI. Fujifilm cameras have a reputation for great film simulations that are applied to the picture when shot. The X100 VI is also a fixed frame camera, meaning if I want to get a close shot I have to move my ass closer. I went from 600mm+ to a 35mm.

In the same way I gravitate towards clean crisp images of birds, I also gravitate towards grainy photos of every day life. I enjoy the friction of the X100 VI, and even with that friction comes a low stakes way to play around with photography and getting to know the different settings better.

At the end of the day, I’m not sure I could even be considered a “novice” photographer. I approach photography in the same way I approach my other hobbies. I do them because they make me happy and I don’t really care if I’m doing it right or wrong. I enjoy showing my pictures to others and hope they get some joy from them as well.