Earlier this month, I talked about where my love of photography came from and evolved during my teenage years.
Well, when I left school I had no particular career in mind, and initially found a job manufacturing printed circuit boards. One of the aspects of my job when working in the quality department was to take photos of micro sections of the boards. We used a dedicated camera that was set on top of a microscope. They were polaroid pictures which proved that the manufacturing process had been done correctly. It wasn’t real photography, but there was a tenuous link.
I got back into photography properly when I started up a web design company. Somehow, I managed to win a contract to build a website for a car dealership. Each week I’d go along and photograph the cars to have images to populate the website I’d created. So more by luck than planning, I got back into photography.
How my choice of camera and lens helps me frame the images I see
I bought my first DSLR, a Canon 1D, which took magnificent pictures. It doesn’t have the largest number of megapixels available, but it takes beautiful images, and it’s still my favourite camera. However, once you have a good camera body it’s all down to the lenses, and the body can do what it does.
As I’ve already mentioned, my two interests are 1) framing the image I want to capture, with 2) the correct camera and lens for the job; understanding the technical aspect of how the camera works and why certain features are there.
Busy with my web services rather than commission photographers, I decided to take the images myself. And that’s how I ended up with my own photography business.
I continually upgrade my cameras, not always because the ones I have are not good enough, but because I want to ensure that when I do a job I have exactly the correct camera for that particular job, and the correct lens.
Sometimes I just love to search for the tricky lens that nobody else has!
Hasselblad (perhaps the Rolls Royce of cameras, because of their reputation), created a mirror system where you could hang your camera on an object, and through the system you’d get a Hall of Mirrors effect (of the subject going off into the distance). You then knew that the subject/object was perfectly lined up. So, I bought one. However, it is designed for the Hasselblad, which I don’t have. Therefore, I had to use an old lens, put a different mount on the end of it that it would marry up to the mirror system, and then I could focus. I can go out on location, photograph a huge piece of a building or equipment and I can line it up perfectly.
Because, as I said earlier, I’m not so interested in the developing/ post-production aspect of photography, for me, having the right camera and lens means I can create the perfect photo in the quickest time. This is important when there is a commercial cut-off point in terms of time and money. Wanting to retain my love of photography, I’d much rather have fun taking the image and knowing that I’ve been able to capture it first time, using the right equipment than spend hours on my computer editing.
