Started by micro43mick, 15 Mar 2026. 12 replies, 292 views
Was giving out to the wife about the price of lenses and she asked me why I even started, and I realised I'd no proper answer. Mine's boring, I think: borrowed my uncle's Olympus for a school tour to Rome in 1998, came back with 24 photos of my thumb and one of the Colosseum that's still on the fridge. What about ye?
Dad's darkroom, which was also the downstairs loo... which meant everyone in the house had to knock and wait, and my mum's patience was legendary. I'd sit on the edge of the bath at about seven years old watching the prints come up in the tray under the red light, and I swear nothing has ever felt more like magic since, not even the internet. You'd see the shadows first, then the faces, and you never quite knew who it would be until it got there.
He let me make my first print when I was nine. A photogram of my own hand and his house keys, laid on the paper under the enlarger with the lens cap off for a count of five. Came out a bit fogged because I opened the door too early. Still got it somewhere, in a shoebox with the measuring cylinders.
All downhill from there, really. Or uphill. Depends who you ask, and whether they've seen my chemistry bills...
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Nikon FM, 1979, bought with money from a summer job at a gravel pit outside Flagstaff. Cost me most of the summer, and my dad thought I'd lost my mind. The guy at the camera store threw in a 50mm f/2 and a roll of Kodachrome 64, and told me to read the instructions twice. I read them once.
Took it to Yellowstone that August and shot six rolls of Kodachrome of bison butts. Every one of them walking away from me, because I was too nervous to get closer and too dumb to wait for them to turn around. That was my first lesson in fieldcraft, though I didn't know the word yet.
The FM is long gone, traded in on an FE2 in '85, but I've still got the slides somewhere in the garage, in yellow boxes with the dates on. And the bison are still butts. - Walt
WaltK_AZ said:the bison are still butts
Ha, some things never change
my nan's instamatic in a drawer when I was about 12, she let me use up the half roll that was still in it and I photographed the cat about nine times. then nothing for years, then a cheap FM2 off ebay in lockdown when I was bored out of my mind, and now I have a bathroom full of chemicals and a pentax the size of a toaster. the cat photos were better honestly
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micro43mick said:she asked me why I even started
My son was born. I bought a camera to take photos of him and learned that babies move faster than my phone, and that the light in a hospital room at 3am is very bad. Then he started football, and now I own a 70-200 and my wife asks the same question as yours.
Shot my buddy's wedding as a favor in 2012 with a Rebel and the kit lens. Had no idea what I was doing, bounced a pop-up flash off a ceiling that wasn't there, missed the first kiss because I was changing a card. They loved it anyway, three more people asked, and I've been doing it ever since. Fourteen years later I still get nervous before the ceremony. Do not do favors for friends, kids.
Art school. Wanted to be a painter. First day of the photography module the tutor handed us a Pentax each and a roll of Tri-X and said "painters choose, photographers notice", then sent us out into Glasgow in the rain for the afternoon. I came back with the best pictures I'd made in my life, mostly of puddles, and never picked up a brush again. Bit dramatic of him. He was right though
mike_shoots said:Do not do favors for friends, kids.
Too late lol. I'm on number nine
micro43mick said:What about ye?
Hillwalking first, camera second. Got fed up with my phone pictures never looking anything like what I'd seen from the top of a Munro, bought a second-hand E-M10 and the 12-40 off a man in Perth who was moving to full frame, and here we are, ten years and far too many waterproof jackets later. Still never looks like what I saw from the top, mind
Wanted to ID birds. Needed photos to do it. Then the photos became the point.
Bought a 50mm f/1.8 in college. Saw what wide open did to a background. That was that.
Grand stuff, cheers all. Lovely reading these. Told the wife about Walt's bison and she says she understands me better now. Not sure that's a compliment. She also says she's going to borrow Mike's line about favours the next time her sister asks me to do the christening