My old Kodak Instamatic

I have always been a photographer. My first camera was either a birthday or Christmas present and it was a Kodak Instamatic 126. I still have the camera somewhere. From my point of view that was a wonderful present; from my parents perspective, perhaps not, because back then in the late sixties cameras needed film and film had to be developed and printed which was fairly costly, especially if you had a child that liked taking pictures and also, whose first attempts were not so good. These days if you take some dud pictures with a digital camera- delete them! It’s no big deal. Back then it was expensive!

I remember getting a major verbal lashing from my Mum when we had gone to Boots to collect my photographs. I was using colour film and Mum had to shell out for my pictures of my action man in various poses in the back garden! (Action man? Hey, I was 12!)

Bob the Dog.

Here’s one of my favourite pictures, it’s our old dog Bob. You can read more about Bob in this previous post but he was a lovely dog, part Manchester terrier and part something else. My brother and I, well the whole family really, had a lot of fun with him and one day I caught him sitting in the sun in the back garden, slipped a pair of sunglasses on him and there he is, saved for as long as that black and white snap will last.

Zenith TTL

I was in my twenties before I got my next camera. I bought it from a work colleague who was upgrading and the camera came with a huge 200mm lens, some filters and other bits and pieces. As you can see by this next picture I became really hooked on photography and starting buying camera magazines and books and really learning how to use a camera. I enjoyed taking special effects shots such as double exposures and hand firing the flash in darkened rooms with the camera shutter open. Also I used to take a lot of still life shots such as this one of my camera kit and books.

Olympus OM10

As I gained more confidence I naturally wanted to upgrade. The camera I chose was an Olympus OM10. As time went on I gradually accrued quite a collection of lenses and filters. In the 1980s I was really keen on motor sport and I spent a lot of Sunday afternoons at Oulton Park racing circuit in Cheshire. Silverstone, the home of the British Grand Prix is not so photographer friendly with high fences and the spectators kept back from the track in the interests of safety. Hockenheim, the venue for this weekends German Grand Prix was a circuit I visited in 1988 and I took some great pictures there.

Alain Prost, McLaren Honda 1988

I had a motorwind and a zoom lens and I took some great shots of cars out on the circuit as well as some with my wide-angle lens in the paddock. (Not the paddock at Hockenheim I might add, even in 1988 it was far too expensive for me but Oulton Park’s paddock used to be pretty easily accessible, and fairly cheap.) Later, I bought an Olympus OM2SP, a little more sophisticated than the OM10 but still pretty easy to use.

Digital

I started the digital era with a canon powershot camera and then a Fuji that I picked up second-hand. My first and so far only digital DSLR is a Nikon D100. It’s still a fairly old-fashioned camera; it has the old style flashcard. I bought it on e-bay and I’m really happy with it. I do so love the digital camera age. With digital you can shoot like a professional, bracket your shots and take those extra frames to make sure you have captured your shot perfectly. No need to hold back or worry about running out of film, no need to worry about developing and printing costs. Cover yourself by taking shot after shot and just delete the unwanted ones. Even if they are not quite right, once the image is on your laptop or pc you can re-size, brighten, sharpen, add or take away colour. I’m so glad I have kept all my older, slightly poorer shots because now I can scan them and sort them out with my ten-year old version of photoshop or even with free editing sites like picmonkey. You can even take some of your pictures and convert them to a gif at sites like http://gifmaker.me/

As a blogger, photographs brighten up my blog posts and pull the reader in. On Twitter and Facebook, posts with images pull in 94% more views than posts without a relevant image. That’s a pretty staggering statistic so get out your camera today, even if it’s just your smartphone camera, and get snapping!

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