Your photographic beginnings?

Buceph

I was thinking last night, about how I've always had an interest in cameras and photography. And I was wondering what my earliest memories were and how that love started.

I decided it was going to my grandparents. I never saw my grandfathers camera but I did see the results of his photography. He shot everything on slide film and he had a small slide viewer. You'd put the slides into this small contraption and then look at them backlit through about a three inch viewfinder thing. Every week I'd go up and ask to look at the slides with this contraption. I think he got sick of it eventually and would always say, "Next week." I'd come up the next week and ask again and he'd say, "I said next week, didn't I? It's still this week."

So yeah, that's how I started out. I think after that I was always interested in some way in photography.

dirtyghettokid

when i was little my ma used to take lots of pics. i dunno what camera she had but i used to love going with her to get the film developed. i'd stand at the window watching all the pictures go through the machine. my da had a polaroid and i was always fascinated with how the pics would develop so quickly.
i spent alot of time looking through photo albums and stuff as a kid. got my own camera in 1989 and have loved taking pics ever since. i was always intrigued by really awesome pics.. wondering how to capture things like that .. sad thing is i waited so many years to actually learn properly. i probably spent near 20 years just pointing and shooting!

LeoB

Only discussing this today.

I got my first camera, a practika, I think in late 1980s when I became P.R.O. of my local G.A.A. club. All I done was take shots for local community news and weekly paper of events in the club and any presentations we had. It slowly moved on to getting interested in taking action shots and an odd one around the village.

Its only recently, the last few years I started to take it a little more seriously. Helped set up a club which is going very well and it now my number 1 past time.

Its a great hobby and there is a good sense of commeradary among fellow enthuasists which I like.

Misa-san

Apparently it's in my blood! My Dad's dad was always interested and a bit of an enthusiast and he collected a few cameras which were passed on to my Dad when he passed.

My Dad too was always interested, did a course or two in his spare time - so knew his way around his camera - but it was really just family photos that he took (of which we have hundreds)

So I guess I inherited it from them - including the old cameras, I started using a little plastic camera from Boots, then the family camera which was a digital Fuji camera on holidays and moved on to using my Dad's Nikon FG with 50mm lens. It's still my go-to camera today

Humble beginnings to say the least

mehfesto

I got my first taste of photography working in A&E. I had to document stuff that was likely to be used in legal cases, or that needed archiving because they were uncommon or unusual. Saw some gory stuff, but I bought my own camera soon after and haven't looked back to those days...

Misstaken

My mom used to take film photos of us years ago and then until 4 yrs ago I didn't ever really use a camera. My dad gave me a huge film camra that I couldn't use so went and did a beginners course wtih DCC and bought a DSLR. It's almost my only interest now, don't know what I would do without it!!!
www.flickr.com/misstaken x

Dodgykeeper

My Father is a very keen photographer.

On my wifes side both her Father and Grandfather were photographers, some of her grandads work is here Sadly my Father in Law passed away on Monday, I will be embarking on a photographic project soon that we had threatened to do ever sinc his retirment 5 years ago....

jpb1974

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.... I met this bloke who knew my father, said he was a mighty photographer, that they went on shoots together. He gave me a camera that once belonged to my father telling me "he wanted me to have it"...

The rest is history.

Gregor Samsa

First picture I ever took was of my parents and brother when I was about 4, in a holiday caravan in Bettystown. I somehow lost the only print years ago when I took it into college, ironically to scan it for safe keeping. There's no sign of the neg. I remember distinctly burning my finger on the flash.

First camera was a Pentax ME Super, a hand-me-down from my Dad that I got in 1990, when I needed a camera for a photography module in college. It had a 50mm Pentax lens and a 70-210 Tamron zoom (both mf). At the time, it did everything I could possibly need.

First camera I bought was a Ricoh RDC-5300 in 1999 or so. 2.3 megapixels and a 1.8" screen for over 500 pounds (!). This digital thing could catch on, I thought. I found it in the attic last week. Still works.

It's all been expensively downhill from there.

On a side note, my great-grandmother worked for a studio in Dublin (Lafayette, I think) in the early 1900s hand-colouring photographs. A Photoshopper of her time.

magicbastarder

i grew up reading my dad's practical photography magazines, sometimes for reasons which weren't purely photographic, and started borrowing his camera (olympus OM4Ti) when i was in my teens, and it went from there.

peckerhead

That's me on the right. Kodak Brownie FTW.



I eventually got a Minolta SR-T 100X when I was a teenager, then an Olympus OM-10, then a Canon EOS 650, and used to develop my own B/W stuff until I got in the family way. Still have my old Durst 35mm enlarger tucked away somewhere, just in case!

Heebie

I don't remember exactly how old I was, but my Mum used to let me take her Kodak 127 and a few flash bulbs (the type that burn out when you use them) on school field trips.
I have very few photos or negatives left from back then, but there were a few interesting pictures here and there.
My first trip to Newgrange with my folks is on one of those really early rolls of film.. it has the monument, with people just parked in the field right in front of it. (This was in 1978.. there was no visitor's centre etc..)
Negative was damaged by age, and from the looks of it temperature variations, over the years... but you can certainly see what it's of.
Camera shake was BAD! (no shutter speed on this camera!)

magnumlady

My dad worked for Kodak and had a darkroom set up in the shed. He took photos of all kinds of events. Although seeing how uptight he got doing them I often wondered why he did it.

I only started taking photos 4 years ago, my parents were both very ill and it gave me some 'me time'. Totally hooked now.

kfish2oo2

For as long as I remember I've always stolen my dads copy of National Geographic before he could get to it and just spent hours looking at the amazing pictures. Strangely enough I never really made the connection and didn't get my own camera until I was 15 for a school tour. It was a very cheap auto-zoom film camera and I just couldn't put it down - over the course of the 6 day school tour I used 8 reels of film.

It was not long after that when my dad got himself a 350D which I pretty much took over for our safari in Unfolozi game reserve. I got some beautiful shots of wild dogs - which we were lucky enough to see twice. I think that trip was the real hook - after that I've been absorbing everything I can about photography.

melekalikimaka

bout 21... just kinda got into it cos i wanted to go gigs for free... ended up doing a degree it... get into gigs free anyway now

college fail

xshayx

This started me off some time in the 80s!


Got first SLR (Pentax P30T) in the early 90s. RTE guide used to come with development token for £3.49 for somewhere up north. All I used to spend my money on for a while!