Over the years I have gotten many comments on my photos and I thought I might write today about how I learned to take photographs.
Back in 1971 when I graduated with my associate degree, my parents bought me a 35mm camera, a Minolta SRT102. That fall I went to Rochester Institute of Technology, RIT besides being an engineer college it also has a world renown School of Photography. So every time I took a picture I had a half a dozen photo majors critiquing my pictures. Why did you take the picture frame that way, why didn’t you frame it this way…? Over time I started to see what made a picture a photograph.
Of course wherever you went someone always had a camera with them. Back then I was doing a lot of backpacking in the wilds of the Adirondacks. On one excursion one of my friends brought an 8x10 view camera, you know those big boxy camera that you put the cloth over your head so you can compose the photograph on the ground glass. Because it is so big and cumbersome we each carried a part of the camera, I carried the negative plates. As he was taking photographs with the 8x10, were all were taking photos and I was taking photos with my Minolta. Afterward we compared photographs and critiqued them, I didn’t do that great in my classes but I did learn what made a good photograph.
At RIT they had over 400 darkrooms and non-photo majors could use any that were not being used by the photo majors (we could also check-out photo equipment that wasn’t being used). So I learned how to develop my own film and when I graduated I made a darkroom in my basement to print my own photos.
The other thing that helped me learn photography was the Time Life series of books on photography that I still have today. Each of the two dozen or so books was a different lesson. Whenever a new book came I tried out all the lessons in the book. How focal length is affected by the f-stop, what the effect of shuttle speeds does to a photograph and each book had photographs by famous photographers like Ansel Adams and W. Eugene Smith.
But in the early eighties I gave it all up because it was getting too expensive with the film and processing.
Then in the late nineties at work they bought a digital camera and I realized that once again I could take photographs cheaply again (One of the things about take photos is that you never just take one photograph, you take many. You try many different settings, exposures, etc. So for that one spectacular photograph you might take fifty or more photos.).
So over time I have collected by best photographs into a slideshow…
When I’m shooting I get lost in my inner world, I zone out, I’m just focusing on my photography. For me it is the ultimate form of relaxation. One time I was photographing a waterfall in the middle of the woods, a 100 yards off the trail and I was so focused on shooting the falls that I never noticed the audience that formed behind me. When I stopped taking pictures and looked around there were about a half a dozen people watching me.
The photo on the right my cousin took of me when I was photographing the sailboat on Toddy Pond in Blue Hills ME. I never knew she was taking photos of me taking photos until she sent me this photograph.
My Story is a weekly series of blog posts about my transition and observation of life as a trans-person.
Back in 1971 when I graduated with my associate degree, my parents bought me a 35mm camera, a Minolta SRT102. That fall I went to Rochester Institute of Technology, RIT besides being an engineer college it also has a world renown School of Photography. So every time I took a picture I had a half a dozen photo majors critiquing my pictures. Why did you take the picture frame that way, why didn’t you frame it this way…? Over time I started to see what made a picture a photograph.
Of course wherever you went someone always had a camera with them. Back then I was doing a lot of backpacking in the wilds of the Adirondacks. On one excursion one of my friends brought an 8x10 view camera, you know those big boxy camera that you put the cloth over your head so you can compose the photograph on the ground glass. Because it is so big and cumbersome we each carried a part of the camera, I carried the negative plates. As he was taking photographs with the 8x10, were all were taking photos and I was taking photos with my Minolta. Afterward we compared photographs and critiqued them, I didn’t do that great in my classes but I did learn what made a good photograph.
At RIT they had over 400 darkrooms and non-photo majors could use any that were not being used by the photo majors (we could also check-out photo equipment that wasn’t being used). So I learned how to develop my own film and when I graduated I made a darkroom in my basement to print my own photos.
The other thing that helped me learn photography was the Time Life series of books on photography that I still have today. Each of the two dozen or so books was a different lesson. Whenever a new book came I tried out all the lessons in the book. How focal length is affected by the f-stop, what the effect of shuttle speeds does to a photograph and each book had photographs by famous photographers like Ansel Adams and W. Eugene Smith.
But in the early eighties I gave it all up because it was getting too expensive with the film and processing.
Then in the late nineties at work they bought a digital camera and I realized that once again I could take photographs cheaply again (One of the things about take photos is that you never just take one photograph, you take many. You try many different settings, exposures, etc. So for that one spectacular photograph you might take fifty or more photos.).
So over time I have collected by best photographs into a slideshow…
The photo on the right my cousin took of me when I was photographing the sailboat on Toddy Pond in Blue Hills ME. I never knew she was taking photos of me taking photos until she sent me this photograph.
My Story is a weekly series of blog posts about my transition and observation of life as a trans-person.
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