Photography is a life long passion

My Dad gave me my first camera when I was five that I used to photograph landscapes and my family.

When I was six I inherited an Italian 127 roll film half frame camera, and fell in love with it (still got it).

When I was twelve years old I got my first SLR, a Russian Zenit B with a manual aperture lens. I learned to rely on an exposure meter and then, over time, started to use my eyes to know when F8/125 would work and when it wouldn’t.

At seventeen I got my first part time job while still studying, selling cameras in a camera store.

I started to learn about the current camera technology. I went to Nikon seminars and Canon exhibitions, I got to know the technology and started to build my knowledge and the language of photography.

I learned how to sell, and more importantly, how to upsell; so that customers coming in to buy a roll of 35mm film walked out with a new camera, couple of zooms, a tripod, a flashgun and maybe some filters. That felt good and started a career in sales.

I got really good at selling cameras. I could not afford to buy the cameras I was selling, but looking back at all the credit deals I sold the cameras with, most of the people I sold them to couldn’t afford them either. 

I am in love with photography but I am passionate about camera design, especially the design and function of mechanical film cameras.

Many more years later as a responsible adult with too much free time I began to buy on eBay the very camera models I had been selling as a teenager. At the time when digital DSLRs were new and everyone was dumping the film cameras that they had hardly ever used, I could buy an Olympus OM1 for $15 and a Canon A1 for $35. So I built a collection of 35mm, 120 and 127 film cameras very quickly. Most of which I still own and will never sell.

I shot my first wedding in 2006 on slide, negative and b/w film stock. Very soon after that wedding I switched to digital. I last photographed a wedding in 2014 and have no plans to return to it. Too stressful, although I imagine the stress is significantly higher for today’s wedding photographers. Every uncle, father of the bride and brother of the groom has a phone in their pocket and will be convinced they are better than the guy the lucky couple hired to take their wedding photos.

Here’s a piece of advice that I give to you for free. Whatever camera you have today is already a huge leap up in performance compared to anything any of us started with. Think you need a new camera body? Need a new lens maybe? Some cool looking filters like that guy on YouTube? No you don’t. Just get out there and use what you have.