I haven’t always been a photographer. I know, it’s a terrible thing to admit on a website for professional photography, but it’s true.....
Over the years I have worked as a Customer Service Officer, Receptionist, Office Administrator, Executive Assistant & even had a few brief weeks as an HR Manager (the term “EBA” still sends a shiver down my spine...), but outside of that, on my weekends & evenings- I always had a camera.
The very first camera I ever owned was a Kodak point-and-shoot. I knew nothing about photography, but it always seemed to be me taking pictures when we went to family events. So my mum bought me a shiny new point and shoot camera to replace the rather outdated one of hers I had been using, which was so old it used flash cubes. FLASH CUBES. I’m not joking…..
So, I found myself with a brand new camera (with on board flash!!)- and nothing to do with it.
I was about 14 years old at the time and I had a good friend who lived next door. True, she was five years younger than me (which at that age was like a lifetime!), but meant that she was entertained by pretty much anything I came up with as weekend entertainment. Poor thing.
I can’t count the amount of Saturdays she gave up to me.
She would come over early in the morning & I would spend hours doing her hair and makeup before dressing her up in my teenager clothes & heading out around our neighbourhood, where I would get her to pose in front of trees and flowers and whatever else seemed like a good idea at the time.
Now I’m not gonna lie, those pictures were terrible. Somehow with an automatic focussing camera in midday sunshine I managed to get out of focus, under exposed images. Even so, I was hooked.
My lovely, patient next door neighbour continued to let me do this on many occasions over the years. At the time we both just thought of it as a great way to waste some time on a weekend, but if it hadn’t been for her patience & my mother’s enthusiasm at my horrible pictures (as only mothers can!) I definitely wouldn’t be at this point today.
When I turned 16 my parents bought me my first SLR (film back in those days). I remember unwrapping the paper & seeing the carry bag and getting all nervous and excited in anticipation of what I hoped would be in that zippered case. Sure enough, a second hand Canon body with a …… lens emerged out of the bag and I couldn’t have been happier. I took that darned camera EVERYWHERE.
Again (as expected), I took even more crappy, out of focus, double exposed rolls of film as I worked out how to use all the new features that came with stepping up to an SLR from a point-and-shoot. My mother, god love her, paid for all that film to be processed into actual prints. And kept doing so- even though the ratio of blurry/dark/white images to anything resembling an actual discernible image was pretty high….
As I grew up I still used that SLR, which is great- cos it means I can now share with you a picture of Andrew before facial hair! I’d say he was about 17 in this picture, let’s hope he doesn’t notice I posted it
My time for photography over the years waxed and waned, usually in direct correlation to the amount of time spent with boyfriends. But even when I didn’t have a camera, I still felt a niggly little itch to take pictures.
About ten years ago, I finally decided to scratch that itch once and for all. After much in depth discussion with my brother in law (my camera geek expert), I finally bought by first DSLR, a Nikon D80 with a couple of kit lenses.
Well. After years using a film SLR, digital was a revolution. Gone were my crappy, double exposed images. Sure, I still took some blurry ones (OK, a lot), but you could tell straight away, learn from your mistake & fix it all in a few seconds. It also helped that I had a wealth of knowledge in my brother in law, he answered almost every question I had & explained so much about how stuff worked that I don’t know where I would be without him. So yes, I asked a lot of stupid questions, but to his credit he never once rolled his eyes- and after he stopped laughing he always answered them….
So this was supposed to be a post about how I got into photography, but it turns out to be more of a thank you post to all of the people who helped and encouraged me along the way. But looking back, without that I doubt I would ever have had the interest or the courage to keep going. We get asked a lot about how we got started, so this is my story. Hopefully next week I can convince Andrew to write his!-Niki :)
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