Travels with my camera

I enjoy photography, which is very different to actually being any good at it.  What I lack in talent is made up for in volume.  This is a particularly harsh blow for those that get inflicted with it.  Not only is it mediocre, but there is tons of it.

“Practice makes perfect”, is such a well worn adage it has somehow become true.  A simple experiment will illustrate the point.  Stand in the middle of the room and start flapping your arms, first one of us to fly to the ceiling should write to the Smithsonian.

Practice will improve your arm flapping, but it is not going to enable you to fly.  I will get better at taking pictures but the images will still be mundane.  Interesting in itself.

I dabbled with photography in the days of film and darkrooms.  For a while I was a studio based photographer on the high street taking portraits.  Odd for someone that does not really like people, a dislike which grows as the age of the person reduces.  Being inside is also rather tedious.  Being in a windowless, airless room trying to make brattish kids smile may not be an inner circle of hell, but it is on the periphery.

Also it was for a photographic chain, no self-expression or experimentation allowed.  The classic poses you see in a thousand publicity shots of TV personalities taken 30 years ago which they fondly imagine fools everyone was the norm.

“Oh, how young he looks”, followed by “Who is that wrinkly old fool on stage now?”  Forget airbrushing, much cheaper to have a picture published when you had your own hair and teeth, shame about the flares and the kipper tie, but they will come back into fashion one day.

The days of gunslingers posing in Wild West towns and buttoned up Victorian gentleman with massive beards were long gone.  Photography had lost its allure, for most there was no great sense of occasion, most were their on sufferance to appease a not particularly favourite aunt.

Thankfully those days are behind me and well forgotten, mention it and “cheap wedding photographer” instantly pops into people’s heads.

My love of photography never really left me though, as long as people are not cluttering up the scene, unless they are humorously obese, in shell suits or dressed as cowboys in charity shops.  Admit it, who can resist.

Then digital photography hit, a revelation.  I was not an early adopter of the technology, way to expensive, way to useless, but for the last few years it has been more than fine for my happy snaps.

Now some form of digital camera is with me all the time.

Getting an image is a powerful motivator for me.  I find myself going to places I have very little interest in, because there is a style of picture I wish to experiment with or a subject I want to try out.

One of the great advantages of a year wearing down is sunrises and sunsets become within the reach of almost normal people.  I got up at 04.30 to catch a sunrise over the sea.  It was rubbish, but the dogs got a walk somewhere else, it was warm enough.  It is within the bounds of normality.

When I get home the images are carefully filed away for some future reference point.  With the ever increasing disk sizes and lowering costs there is never any reason to delete even the most terrible of image.  Blurry pictures of blurry objects are lovingly catalogued, another picture of my thumb goes on record.

Over the next 7 days there is an airshow to go to, a classic car event to see, a funfair to witness and a carnival to stare at.  I have no great interest in any of them beyond there is an image of them in my head and I want to capture it on film.

For the longest while I have wondered am I walking or taking photographs, what is my primary motivation for the trip.  There is no real answer to it, seeing things is the reason I go walking, extending the lifespan of the memory by taking a photograph is important too me.  Eventually the image is the walk.