I’ve been taking pictures for a while now. My dad gave me an old Voigtlander when I was in college to learn on. It was a cool little rangefinder that was super manual. I remember, when I was first discovering that there were other cameras out there, trying to figure out if you could take the lens off. You can’t.
I started out using a list of exposures from Fred Parker. It said things like, “Sunset. Subjects in deep shadow.” and then told you what exposure you should use. It was slow and I have a bad memory for those sorts of things so I always had to whip out this sheet and look things up but it worked.
Then my sophomore year I got a Pentax K1000 from a friend for helping him rebuild a car. It had a built in exposure meter and you could change the lens out just like in my dreams. I used that for a long time. It was just a year and a half ago that I upgraded (Pentax LX).
In the interim I figured out what kind of photography I liked. I like images that remind me of places or of being young. I like to focus in on objects because it reminds me of the way that things filled your vision as a kid. You got locked into one thing; a bike, a duck, a door knocker. You could just stare at that thing and try to figure it out.
I also decided that I’m not a digital kind of guy. It’s not some grand personal choice I just prefer film. I like fixed lenses (not zooms) and I like them to be relatively short. I like natural light and I like natural textures. All that hopefully comes through in the stuff I shoot and share.
