Photography History

I grew up with photography always around me. My father is a (Link to his site)professional photographer who does both portrait and landscape photography. I have fond memories of visiting his studio. Growing up I got to help out several times on various photoshoots, it was really interesting to see the process first hand, but I was really inspired by his nature photography. We had a lot of the nature photography hanging up around the house and they always brought back memories of the places we had visited.

Just one example of many photos hanging around the house

When I got older I got to take photos of my own on our family vacations. I loved trying to capture the vistas we visited or the lakes and trees at our cabin.I only had use of the family camera at that time, a simple point and shoot, but it worked for learning.

I didn’t get my own camera until after my senior year of Highschool. The next school year I was going to be in Germany at Bodenseehof bible school and I wanted a camera of my own to capture memories. After some consideration I bought a Nikon Coolpix p500, it was one of their early generation of super zoom cameras and it had a built in 36x optical zoom. I was so excited about this camera, I spent all summer taking pictures with it wherever we went. 

This was the first camera that I bought, it has been a wonderful camera over the 9 years that I have had it.

While I was over in Europe I ended up taking over 10,000 photos in seven months. Everything from the school grounds to castles and the Swiss Alps. I took it everywhere I went, and over time I feel that I got better and better at both taking pictures and editing them. In the beginning I ended up cranking up the saturation and contrast to levels well beyond reality. But over time I got more subtle with my edits and tried to capture more of reality in my images. I feel like this trend has continued to this day.

Since that trip I have done my photography on a more on and off basis. I would do it on trips and sometimes take walks in college to photograph the local area, but it was not an everyday thing like it almost was that year in Europe. I have actually done a lot of photography not on my dedicated camera but with my iPhone. Having a small, light and compact camera with me all the time has actually expanded the number of photos I have taken. 

Over the years I have learned how to better use the cameras I have, to take higher quality photos. In using more editing software I have learned a more subtle touch to editing, to highlight what exists in the photo already instead of trying to change it from what was initially captured.

This past Christmas I got a very generous gift from my Father in law. (Who also does photography, though not professionally) I received a Sony a7iii all my new photos I have taken have been with this new mirrorless camera. I am loving it so far and am really impressed with the quality of photos I have been getting. I have also been using the app Darkroom on my iPad pro for editing and I am really liking this workflow. Over this year I plan on refining this workflow and improving my photography skills even more. I have considered trying to sell some of my photos as prints, but we’ll have to see if that comes to pass this year. 

If you have any questions about the cameras I have used or the different apps/workflows feel free to leave them below and I’ll try to answer what I can.