What Got You Going?

Fajitas!

What started your interests in photography? Just being curious here, to see where we all came from

(I'm also bored...You'd never guess...)

evilhomer

Surely you can't start a thread like this without regaling us with your story first?

Fajitas!

Surely you can't reply without regaling us with yours?

I'll wait patiently...and reveal my so so so interesting story...when the time is right!

Fenster

It's a long and sorid tale involving a priest, a rubber chicken and the Swedish bikini volleyball team.

Wait...that was losing my virginity.

Fajitas!

Bah, come on, there must be some interesting stories!!!

Where's Leinstermans!?!?!

Greysoul

Ah what the hell, I'll try...

I always liked photography since I was big enough to hold my mom's old Instamatic, but it never really clicked (heh) with me until just over ten years ago... I was/am manic-depressive and severely agoraphobic, incapable of setting foot outside for several months at a time... and after I tried to kill myself and ended up in a mental ward, when I got out I started playing with one of our old cameras, goofing around with it to keep myself distracted. And before I knew it I was photographing everything in sight around the house, and slowly from there in the back yard, eventually a little farther away down the street, very gradually from there until I ended up here halfway around the world I didn't plan it that way, but it became my biggest weapon for fighting the depression and agoraphobia... the fear never really went away, but the love of shooting new things just slowly became bigger than that.

So there you go... no bikini teams, alas, but I did photograph a Playboy bunny once, if that counts.

Noah

Rojo

It all started with this bad boy:




Don't judge it on how it looks, it really was a beast...


I think its funny how most people get interested into photography, I find a lot of the time its always that person's dad was interested in photography and passed it on to their child. It's in the genes!! :P


Didn't fully become obsessed with photography until I went to Peru. I had a 35mm compact and a tonne of film didn't know what I was doing with the camera itself, it was pretty much automatic, thank god. When I came back and got everything developed there was a few decent shots, and I got loads of complements on them. From then I got a digital sony P&S, then started taking photos on my dad's film SLR and now the 350d. Although, I've gone back to the film SLR because I'm doing portfolio preperation in IADT and it's predominantly B&W film we're dealing with.


Up and onwards... I hope to get a place in IADT next year after the nasty LC. :P

Rojo

I never noticed it before, but that camera looks like an Elephant!

Borderfox

bought a horse and started taking pictures of him covered in mud, which was pretty much everytime we let him near a field. Loving it still and making money too....

Sebzy

My first snappy was the Kodak 110 which I was given by my gran at the age 7 or so.


It got a bit of use but I only got serious back in 1998 when I got my first digital and started taking pics at varous music events. Now get asked to cover events by promotors

If anyones intrested all the cam's I've owned are listed here.
http://www.sebastiandooris.com/equipment.php

By the way i'm still crap and have no idea what i'm doing.

Seb.

Fobia

Started off with something like that in Rojo's post, but as with most I didn't really take an interest until much much later..

Just went from messing around with a cybershot in my room with a friend, then we started going out at 4am in the morning (summertime!) to cycle with the dawn surrounding, and thought it'd be fun to bring cameras along..

I'd like to think I've come a long way since then, but sure, like any art, you're always improving so it's hard to judge!


I'm also hoping for photography in college if I can afford the move to Dublin, though I'm edging more towards DIT right now due to location..that and the IADT campus is a tad depressing..

Roen

Here ya go

Well............not quite, but the real story is a lot more boring.

dan99989

I started out with a little Kodak Instamatic 25 my grandad gave me...http://www.upcnet.es/~org/htm/main_insta25.htm



And at the age of about 11/12, my dad gave me his Pentax K1000...great camera which i still use today.

tab126

My story seems to be quite different, so I'll go ahead and share.

I started in my 2nd year of high school taking pictures for the school yearbook/newspaper of our (american) football team. After about 10 minutes of instruction, I was handed a Canon Rebel, a 70-300mm f/4-5.6 lens, and 5 rolls of 1600 ISO film. The first night was a bit of a trial-by-fire, but I had the hang of it by the 2nd and 3rd game and was getting pretty decent pictures.

I was so impressed with what the camera could do that my dad bought my mom that exact camera for christmas so they could keep a better record of my brother and me as we were finishing grade school/college/etc. This basically turned into me buying film and taking it to an airshow, around the countryside, and where ever else I wanted to take a picture. Finally, they got ME a camera because I was leaving for boarding school, and they knew I liked photography (though with development prices and my being 16, I didn't shoot that much).

At boarding school, there was a B&W development lab. That was the darkroom where my girlfriend at the time taught me how to develop b&w film (poorly). I loved changing the exposure by the timing of the light and chemicals. I can't remember a bit of it now, but I still have pretty fond memories of that darkroom.

That spring, I took a 2 week seminar course in high speed imaging. We had to come up with our own proposals. A partner and I came up with the idea of trying to photograph exploding balloons. I won't bog you down in chemistry, but the basic idea is as follows: The volume of air of 2 parts hydrogen to 1 part oxygen is higher than when the parts are combined into one gas (water vapor) -- by a factor of 3:2 if I'm not mistaken. We wanted to capture the size reduction before the increased heat caused the air to expand. Also, we wanted to blow stuff up for 2 weeks and this seemed like a pretty good way to do it.

In any event, our project got approved and we got some interesting shots: . More can be seen at http://courses.ncssm.edu/hsi/ss/h2o_balloons/galleries/ -- the website sucks, but there is some information about technique and setup that some (especially those interested in high speed) might find interesting. Also check out http://courses.ncssm.edu/hsi/ss/h2o_balloons/galleries/stills/pages/tcbs7_004.htm, just 'cause you don't see pictures like that every day.

That was my exposure to lighting, shutter-speed, aperature, Apple-II assembly language, building my own stuff to attach to cameras, and high-end DSLR's. I was hooked.

About 3 years later, I bought a Canon 350D a few months after it came out. I've bought a few lenses for it, and have been struggling with the more artistic side of photography since. About 4,000 shutter actuations later, I'm still only learning to balance speed and grain, DOF, metering modes. I still feel like my shots aren't that good (I see others with magical colors & saturation), but I am having fun. Someday I'll figure out what's going on, but I still have a few shots that I wouldn't mind having in canvas on my wall.

So sorry for the long post, but I think my "getting into" photography was a long process. And anyways, Fajitas asked!

dazftw

It only started two years ago for me and I got a finepix 180 I think it was in carlow(I live in waterford) it was like 160 or something so euro and I only got it to just take pictures of my friends skatingboarding..


Then I realised what I could take pictures of also and progressed from there.. thats baiscally it!

Ive been hooked since loving it more and more everyday

Anouilh

Posting to websites helped to focus on photographics and photography. The photographers were incredibly helpful and very good company.