There’s a fascination about photographs, proper old photographs. Holding a photograph not just viewing on a screen. Do you recall the anticipation of taking a set of photos, sometimes over a period of weeks or months? Sending the roll or rolls of film off to be processed and the, what seemed like, eternal wait for the results to be returned? The highs of the successes and the lows of the shaky blurred images.
Even now I love trawling through the photographs in my mothers attic. The photos from our childhood, from her childhood and those rarities of her mothers childhood. Each generation captured in a split second of magic. There is something very very special about holding a picture of people who lived in the Edwardian or indeed if you’re very lucky the Victorian age. For me I can almost feel the history, imagine the life the people in the photo lived.
I was given my first camera by, well someone very important to me. He died far too young, but the point is he introduced me to the fun of a snap camera.
Then I was introduced to the intricacies of shutter speeds, F stops, and I bought my first Olympus manual camera. I seemed to have an eye for composition: didn’t always get the right aperture setting but generally the subject was framed pretty well.
Work got in the way and I stopped using the camera – to my ever lasting regret.
After my early retirement it occurred to me that I could combine my love of old buildings, architecture, nature and photography AND get out and about again. The four walls of the house had been closing in. But of course film is as rare as hen’s teeth now and it seemed that if I wanted to get back into photography I would have to embrace the digital age.
So, in May 2015 I bought a second hand Digital Olympus. I hadn’t used a digital camera before (apart from the blackberry and I don’t think we can count that) but have found that I enjoy the freedom of being able to take as many photos as I want and edit and discard as I see fit. Almost instant gratification! The results can be seen on Instagram and Flickr for those interested.