Did you get into photography because you liked photos or cameras?

[FrankS]

Finding my father's old camera was the hook, but learning to make my own prints in the university darkroom and this early image was the yank that set it.

 

[CK Dexter Haven]

Cameras, probably.

I remember my maternal grandmother having a Polaroid, kept on the top of a china cabinet. It fascinated me. My maternal grandfather was an avid amateur photographer. When I bought a 'spy camera' — probably from the back of a comic book — he drove me around to several stores looking for the tiny film for it. Unsuccessfully. Never shot a picture with that thing. I think both of those cameras had my interest before I was interested in the photos that resulted from any cameras. And, there was no concept of 'photography' as a profession or art at that point. I was probably 6 years old or so.

Photography didn't become a thing for me until my parents divorced (when i was 13), and my father started dating a rather 'sophisticated' woman who had been to Paris (!) — a big thing for someone in Delaware in the early 80s.... She had a copy of American Photographer that i started leafing through during a visit. It happened to have an article about Richard Avedon. And, that was it.

 

[Rangefinderfreak]

I was a musican, went to John Coltrane´s concert, borrowed a camera to take a picture of my guru. I knew absolutely nothing about photography before that. Not even how to expose so I gambled: put all dials into other end: one second and 1,4 then to other : 500 and 16 so you know nothing came out of those, but luckily also in the middle 1/15 and 5,6
These turned out just great ! slow shutter and the spotlights reflecting from the blur of shiny saxophone ! I won a couple photo competitions with the picture and thought WoW photography is nice. said to my father that I want to be a photographer. He understood that I was a total dumbie , so he bought me a black leica M2 so I at least looked like I knew something about it. Then it was just to learn from mistakes, as I always knew how I wanted my images to look. So I turned to photography just for the pictures, all the equipment have come later to better express whai I try to do. very simple ! I still think photography can be learned in a weekend. How to see is then a bit more difficult...

 

[jenquest]

When I was young it was because my dad's camera looked cool (Yashica Electro 35GTN). As I got older, I felt and continue to feel a sense of calm when behind the viewfinder. So I guess it was the 'camera' that started it all off.

 

[benlees]

I have zero skills when it comes drawing but I wanted to make some of that art stuff. Photography seemed the easiest way in. Didn't know anything about cameras- in fact I had a very immature dislike of photographers when I was young; seemed like they were always getting in the way.

 

[finguanzo]

I was more interested in the process than in the photography. Curious about the development, print.
Im usually the same about anything, while in school, a half a** musician, I was more interested in how it was recorded/why it sounded the way it did, that the music itself, became an audio engineer, and on and on...

 

[jsrockit]

Let me clarify my point... based on the fact that I believe the camera lured me into liking photos. Going back to the first time I picked up a camera... I picked up the camera because it was cool. The next step was to go out and get film so I can use this cool camera. then the photos came back from the lab and looked like a ton of mistakes. This is my earliest memory about photography...around 8 years old.

So, basically, I'm asking what made you pick up the camera in the first place for the FIRST time... the camera or the desire to make a photo? or both?

 

[MIkhail]

I cannot say that I totally oblivious to camera in my hand. As an engineer by profession, I respect fine piece of machinery.
But, as I understood few years ago, fiddling with different cameras only hurts my output (images) so I stick with one camera and if possible - one lens. This allows me forget about camera and take images instead.
I would not say "camera completely does not matter" as camera is a tool and good tool does matter. But only to that extent to which tool can matter. Not any further. Fondling cameras, putting a different covers on them, keeping them on display.... please. It's fine to do all that, but has nothing to do with photography, in my opinion.

 

[Bobbo]

I liked memories... then my inquisitive technical side got a strong dose of "crack." 😀

 

[daveleo]

. . . . About 15 years ago I came to look at cameras as beautiful machines (regardless that they made pictures).

Today, I do both (take pictures and fondle cameras 🙂 ) and the two are not related in my mind.

I will add to my previous comment up there about beautiful machines, after thinking about it . . . today when I make pictures, I use digital cameras, but the cameras that I love and fondle 😀 are film cameras. Digital camera designs (not talking about IQ, etc etc) don't cut it as beautiful machines. If cameras began at digital, I would not be so captivated by them as machines.

 

[DougFord]

Definitely drawn to the aesthetic but who doesn't love some of the machines used to produce it?

 

[Vics]

When I was a child, my parents gave me a Brownie that I used until I was 20. Didn't think much about that gear, and left it in the back of a taxi in Puerto Rico. The I bought a book called Double Exposure by Roddy MacDowell, my first real photo book, and within a month, I had a Yashica TLR and that was it! I was off on that quest for the kind of images I had in my mind's eye.

 

[robbeiflex]

For me it was mostly the desire to document my travels. I had spent a couple of years living away from home and then had a couple of trips to Europe and thought - wow, I can't believe I have no photos from these experiences. Enter a Canon P&S, followed a few years after by its digital equivalent (IXUS or ELPH, depending on your continent). Then after a few years of living in Europe, I had the budget to get a digital SLR. Loved it, and learned a lot from it, and got interested in shooting some black and white film, and that was just the beginning....

Cheers,
Rob

 

[swoop]

I got into photography because I wanted to show people things I saw and places I went.

 

[nikon_sam]

Growing up we didn't take that many photographs...pictures were a luxury and there were other things needed that were a priority...I got into it in high school where I borrowed one of the many Kodak 126 cameras in photo class...It was all about taking pictures, developing film & prints even if they were out of focus, blurry and grainy...two years later my parents bought me my first real camera...
It is still all about the picture...

 

[migtex]

With both parents Pro photographers I had very little chances...

Still remember the image the first time I pick up the Nikon F.. and the beaten the Old man did to me because of it (on those times slaps were part of education reportoire... and it worked).
Got my first Instamatic 126 on the day I got 6.

I think on my side it's 50/50, I used to see Nikon's and Hassies all day long so... and the studio and lab where always available...

A pic of my family from my first roll (cartridge) on the Agfa 126 - outside of Lisbon Photo Show 1966 ( we used to have that... )

 

[DtheG]

Going back 50 years, I am not sure why I wanted a camera as a birthday present at eight. My father had been a keen photographer but with a mortgage to pay and my younger brother on the way the beloved Rolliflex had been sold some years before. There were not many books in the house at that time so I had probably read, 'The Manual of Photography' (and also 'The Silent World' and 'The Manual of Seamanship') dozens of times before I saved a year for the FED-3 a few years later. I think the making of photographs is the important part for me, chosing good quality tools is part of that, but in the end what matters is that the final result does emit something of the care and the pleasure, a that went into its creation.

 

[barnwulf]

It was all about the photographs. I liked shooting pictures with the family camera even when I was a kid which was over 60 years ago. When I was about 20 years old I saw some photographs from some great photographers, Steichen, Stieglitz, Stand, Winn Bullock and I knew wanted to I shoot photographs. - jim

 

[Peter_Jones]

Growing up, cameras were a luxury item - film and processing were expensive, as were decent cameras. The family cameras were a plastic 126, eventually followed (in the 80s) by a 110 ! The photos were always disappointing. I was given a 127 Brownie that worked OK if the sun was shining, but only had film by saving pocket money. I used to drool looking in camera shop windows at gear that was prohibitively expensive, and therefore fantastically mysterious. The first camera I bought once I started working was a plastic 35mm auto-everything (Miranda/Halina or something like that), again disappointing. Got a well used Olympus OM, and discovered decent lenses (took me a while to get out of the mindset of using bargain-basement film though...)

Perhaps the fact that these things were so out of reach explains why I now have a house full of (inexpensively-acquired) 35mm and medium-format gear 🙄

Can't blame the gear now 😱

 

[maddoc]

Finding my father's old camera was the hook, but learning to make my own prints in the university darkroom and this early image was the yank that set it.

I would have been very happy if the first prints I made would have been that nice as yours, Frank !

My first interest in photography was driven by the desire to understand the photographic process as such, what was it that led from the mysterious process of loading film (Robot film cassettes) to the final small square-shaped prints ... I guess that becoming a scientist was not by coincidence.