With a passion for art as a background, one hobby that I gained this year was a passion for photography, and as I continue to grow better at it, I’m excited to see where it will take me.
My family travels somewhat frequently and as I’ve gotten older I’ve felt the urge to document all of the things I’ve seen while I’m away from home. I saw photography as a good way to do this. In the past I did this with my iPhone camera, but I felt as if it was a bit limiting and I wanted to take photography further.
I decided I needed a better camera. At first though, I was very overwhelmed with the amount of options and variations among every single camera, even within the price range I was allowing for myself, it seemed like the amount of options was crazy. My friends recommended the Seawood Photo shop in San Rafael, since they had a wide selection of used cameras for good prices. I settled on buying a used Nikon D5100 for $160.
I felt really worried when I first took it around the city because it felt like such a fragile device, but as I used it more I discovered that it was more durable than I thought it would be. The features also kind of revealed themselves to me and were a lot simpler and user friendly than I originally thought they’d be.
Originally I never edited any of my photos, as I felt like it made them altered from their original form and therefore unoriginal. Plus, I felt like editing them would take away from my original purpose of documenting things how they really were. But as I was exposed to more and more photography I was able to see that I could use this medium in a more artsy way by editing my pictures. Different ways of editing pictures could also elicit more emotions associated with a place than an unedited photo would.
This winter break I traveled to Toronto in order to spend some time with my family. I saw this as a good opportunity to take as many pictures as I could. Some of the concepts that I like to make art of are industrial infrastructure, run down buildings, street art, old and new buildings next to each other. When I visited Toronto it was much colder than the Mediterranean climate of San Francisco. To exaggerate the coldness and darkness of the winter I turned the temperature, exposure and saturation down in Adobe Lightroom to achieve the results I wanted.
One of my favorite things to do for fun is attend local concerts with small bands so naturally I brought my camera along and I found that I really enjoyed taking pictures at concerts. Be it a portrait of the lead singers or action shots from the mosh pit I think there’s a lot that can be captured at these events.
In the future I plan on doing more concert photography and landscape photography as well, as I feel as if I enjoy these two genres the most. One thing I would like to try in the future is cameras that utilize film, as I feel as though I could get some effects with them that would be hard to replicate digitally.
I’m looking forward to learning about film photography in the future and improving my skills.
