My Photo History

When I was a child, it was a ritual to pose for pictures every time I visited my grandmother.  Always outside, as her little Kodak Brownie didn't have a flash.  She would carefully position me in front of her favorite flowers, or with her current cat, or whatever.

Grandma's cats, who did not want to be held, apparently

Even today, whenever I see some of those photos, they can take me back six decades to when they were taken!  Many years later, I inherited several of her photo albums from her life in her 20's, totally amazed at some of her compositions.

Grandma's garden, age 5

Grandma's darling composition

As she was the most precious person in my life, I like to think that maybe I developed an interest in taking pictures from her, both by nature and by nurture.

I was always interested in capturing the pieces of my own family life, always trying to get everybody as complimentary as possible with attention to whatever background, without really knowing any "rules," often to the chagrin of the subjects.  I was taught as a child that people always needed to be included to make a photo interesting.

Now I think that is probably more true with old black and white film, but that is what I grew up with!

Then I moved to Europe and got to travel around quite a bit, seeing such a different world than I was used to.  I was usually without any family, I wanted to capture what I was seeing, but it seemed a bit tacky to always find strangers to take pictures of me standing by myself in front of whatever.  So I tried to find different ways to make pictures of things by themselves look as interesting as with the supposedly required people, as I was taught.  Thus, I started teaching myself my own composition style.

My 8th birthday (we went to Disneyland as a surprise!) with Grandma and my dad, my photography influences

Over the years, I had a number of little cameras, starting with my own little Brownie (which I still have) for my eighth birthday.  It was replaced with a nice Polaroid for my high school graduation.  I think my dad gave me both, including a nice tripod many years later.  Nice memories!

We have square photos from some early camera.  I made friends with the camera guy at K-Mart, and he sold me a nicer compact camera for $5 because the (repaired) hinge was broken.  I had that one for years, preserving fond memories of Max.

In Grandma's grape arbor, just before I turned 13.

Eventually we graded up to a used Minolta SLR.  It was a major learning curve having to focus everything and not lose the shot.  It was a totally different world from what I was used to.  But that later led to moving on to a Canon SLR that I totally picked out myself, without help from the technical member of the family.

I loved that camera, until it was stolen on a trip.  I wasn't able to replace it, so I settled for a Canon bridge, a comedown from what I'd lost but more than I'd had most of my life.  My main interest was in the composition of the shot anyway.  I made more of an effort to actually learn techniques with the nicer cameras, however.

2019, with my new toy!

And now I'm going "back to school" to continue my education.  This time, perhaps you'll enjoy coming along with me, either learning something new yourselves or simply giving me alternative opinions of my results.

While composition in full auto mode is my comfort mode, I will also be trying to learn more about how to use the wonderful new technology built into my new Panasonic Lumix bridge.