Greetings from Ontario Canada - Keego

[Keego]

Welcome Keego.

I am very intrigued to see some of your images after such an interesting introduction.

Well right now i do not have many, and only one really good one. I don't have a nice place to display everything i have and keep the integrity of the image. Sites like facebook and imgur and photobucket degrade the blacks and just distort them so they don't look as pretty anymore. Still working on it though!

[Iguanasan]

Welcome to the forum, Keego. I too am looking forward to seeing what you do with that new bit of kit. As for hosting sites that don't manipulate too much you might want to try Flickr or Smugmug or a host of others that are targeted at photographers vs targeted at everyone.

As for me, I got started (yes I read to the end) in a real way back in 1984 when my father passed away and I was given his Canon TX-1 film camera. He was not a photographer really; once in a while he pulled out the camera and took photos but I think he felt more at home with a Polaroid than an SLR. I really enjoyed capturing moments back then but got away from it for a few years due to the cost of developing and being busy with other things in life. I got back into it in the days of digital (2002-ish) and I've been going at it ever since in one way or another.

[Keego]

Welcome to the forum, Keego. I too am looking forward to seeing what you do with that new bit of kit. As for hosting sites that don't manipulate too much you might want to try Flickr or Smugmug or a host of others that are targeted at photographers vs targeted at everyone.

As for me, I got started (yes I read to the end) in a real way back in 1984 when my father passed away and I was given his Canon TX-1 film camera. He was not a photographer really; once in a while he pulled out the camera and took photos but I think he felt more at home with a Polaroid than an SLR. I really enjoyed capturing moments back then but got away from it for a few years due to the cost of developing and being busy with other things in life. I got back into it in the days of digital (2002-ish) and I've been going at it ever since in one way or another.

Thats a great story thanks for sharing!

Yeah i will definitely check out the sites you mentioned, i take alot of dark photos (i work during the night) so i am just so unhappy when i upload a photo and the blacks start to grade and look brown :-(

[christopher steven b.]

Welcome to the forum, man.

What's my story ? I started shooting in my 3rd year of university (U of Toronto) whilst headlong into a Philosophy and Math program. Fumbling with a tiny crappy sony digital camera became an obsession--I really liked how photography is just one of those mediums by which one could work intuitively without necessarily being fully aware of what one was expressing or how one would go about expressing that. A few months into it I upgraded; a few months more and I had my first dslr.

Currently I photograph weddings full time, but still manage to occasionally take non-compulsory photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/christopherstevenb/

[Runmonty]

I did read right through but was pressed for time when I responded last time, so here is my story.

I started out as a kid with a Kodak Instamatic 126 cartridge camera with the old style flash cube. After this melted from being left in car on a hot day I progressed to a Kodak Instamatic 110 pocket camera. In my teens I used my family’s Minolta rangefinder camera (which really did have an awesome lens). I first got serious at university in the early 80’s when I purchased my first SLR which was a Canon AE1 (which I still carry around today load with B & W film). I carried this backpacking around the world with 2 lenses.

Some of the film point and shoot film cameras in the 90’s were terrific and I used a Pentax while travelling. Between the AE1 and the point and shoot I was quite happy for a while. Like Iggy, work and life got in the way of my hobby, and apart from travelling I did little else throughout the 90’s.

I have always been an early adopter and had digital cameras from an early stage (Olympus C900). I loved the convenience of digital, but for a long time the quality was never as good as film (or was ridiculously expense), so my photography was really pretty much point and shoot digital (with a few different cameras) until approx. 5 years ago when I went digital SLR.

I have always loved sports photography, but these days I find the process of trying make imaginative and creative photos therapeutic and therefore photography is my release from the stresses of life and a chance to exercise my (mythical) “right side of the brain”.

[QuietOne]

I got into photography in high school, continued through college, then started paying my own bills Did a whole lot less until digital got cheap. I picked up a Powershot A10 (a whopping 1.3 megapixels!) because it was within the budget after careful consideration - the A20 had just come out. I started walking along the Greenbelt near my office and actually got some not bad pictures with it. Moved to an Olympus SP-550 UZ, because I was obviously enjoying myself, but the A10 just wasn't cutting it for shots across the river. Mike has that one now, and uses it when neat airplanes fly into the Nampa airport, or when one of the pilots stuffs him in the back of one of the warbirds because they're doing a test flight and the back seat is empty. Then Mom came for a visit one year and bought a Nikon D90 for me, and has bought a couple of other lenses for me, as well. That's what I'm using now.

Tips? Get to know the limits of your camera. There were things the Powershot and Olympus just weren't going to handle, so once I discovered where the edges were, I didn't frustrate myself by demanding the impossible. Instead, I concentrated on what they could handle. Mostly it had to do with distance.

There's always something to be photographed. Pixels are cheap; try something even if you're pretty sure it won't come out the way you'd like.

If you don't always have time to take that Jeep out, look close to home, too. I have a fair number of photos of critters and such, many along the Boise Greenbelt. It's a very urban area, and the river is "groomed" for stretches through town. There's still an incredible amount of wildlife to be found. Fish and Game had to capture a young moose in badk of Albertsons Corporate not too long ago. Great blue herons are common - I shot one beating a snake bloody against a rock once. Easily half a dozen species of ducks once migration starts, and Canada geese all over the place. Bald eagles start fishing in the river once the ponds and lakes have started freezing over; I even saw 3 of them fly across a major intersection near the university once. I took pictures of marmots near the irrigation canal in front of the Fred Meyer in Nampa. Deer Flat Wildlife Refuge is less than 5 miles away from my house. The back end of Snake River Birds of Prey Conservation Area is less than 10, and the Snake itself is even closer. And every park has endless squirrels, crows, pigeons, snakes, lizards, song birds and more.

Under certain circumstances, let the camera do the work. Pick an aperature, let the autofocus and metering take care of the rest. For some of the airplane shots I do, it's essential. I wasn't down on the taxiway as much this last show, but I have been in the past, and these things move when taking off. Before autofocus, not many photographers did in the air shots, and the few that could manage it were considered geniuses. For natural things, want a shot of quail? They just about explode across the path when they spot you.

One of the best things I ever bought was a cheap fishing vest. A photog's vest just hasn't been in the budget. A fishing vest has lots of pockets with zippers and velcro closures, and you can stuff an amazing amount of cards, batteries, cleaning clothes, filters, even a small lens into them.

OK, I'm officially rambling. It's kinda late.