How has your photography changed over the years?

After age 50 a few yrs ago, my eyesight went from perfect to requiring reading glasses (far-sighted), and I lost most interest in photography since I could not 'see' in the darkroom any more and couldn't see the 120 film hanging & drying without readers, after decades of being spoiled w/perfect close-up vision.

The earlier EVF's were not good or inspiring, but the newer EVF's lately since ~2016-2018 or so have given my eyes a new life and it's fun again to shoot digital Leica and Hasselblads (and Sony A7r5) and being able to 'see' again without using glasses, allows me to spend more time on composition like before w/film.
 
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Wenge said:
After age 50 a few yrs ago, my eyesight went from perfect to requiring reading glasses (far-sighted), and I lost most interest in photography since I could not 'see' in the darkroom any more and couldn't see the 120 film hanging & drying without readers, after decades of being spoiled w/perfect close-up vision.

The earlier EVF's were not good or inspiring, but the newer EVF's lately since ~2018 or so have given my eyes a new life and it's fun again to shoot digital Leica and Hasselblads (and Sony A7r5) and being able to 'see' again, allows me to spend more time on composition like before w/film.
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I understand completely. At four score and four the choice between RF and AF is not always academic or one of artistic expression but of "Do you want a picture?" Then there is a problem of "Do you want that picture?" But that is a whole other question. Luckily cameras are not heavy so we can get around with them easily. And running 100% digital there is no need for film rolls, unexposed, in camera or exposed in bag.

So long as I can pass the eye test to get a license to drive I guess I can see well enough to know what direction to point the camera. I think I can.
;o)

I do think I am shooting better. But one must consider my starting point first and, second, repetitions and volume raise the possibility of getting a good shot. You know the old metaphor, even a blind hog finds a root once in awhile.
 
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I was offered my first camera when at the age of 11, a Vivitar point-and-shoot.

Film was expensive where I was; processing even more so. So photography came in waves, here and there during my teenage years.

I was smitten with literature and wanted to pursue a journalistic career but after my first year as an intern at the local paper, it became clear that I wouldn't be able to make a living - so I went into a technical career and that was that.

A few years later I was hired by a press agency for a technical role. Bathing in journalistic excellence (my appreciation) and being so close to professional photo-journalists, I was inspired and decided to buy a camera (an EOS 66).

Since then it's been a stratified photographic life of buying and selling gear across continents; buying and giving away darkroom equipment; going from diversity (different systems, multiple lenses in each) to purity (1 system but a with a complete set of lenses). Lots of money went into those cycles. I've now ended up with a couple of Nikon F3s, an S3, a Rolleiflex and an Olympus Pen half-frame that I inherited. And books, a lot of books - too many and too heavy when I've had to move.

Professionally I shoot stock with D850s. I use that stock in marketing, technical literature , training material or just powerpoint slides. It's a sweet feeling to have a corporate presentation to customers where a slide has a photo that triggers conversations. They are my photos so I don't have to deal with licensing and redistribution rights.

Regardless of the gear - and I've been blessed to have owned a wide range: Leica, Hasselblad, Canon, Nikon, Rollei, Fuji - I've struggled (I struggle) with my photographic eye ('regard' in French).

I spend a considerable amount of time reading about photographers, visiting galleries and watching documentaries about photographers who talk about their work.

The only camera I'd like to own but probably never will due to cost is a Linhof 617. Seeing Wim Wenders' panoramic slides of Ground Zero was a marker in my photographic journey.

Finding a photographic voice (having something to say) seems to be an eternal quest. So I shoot a lot of photos but very rarely look at them. My film backlog sits at between 6-8 years, and growing.

To answer the question posed by the original post, I conclude that I now like the photographic art (the practice of expressing something with light and shadows constrained by a frame) more than actually making photographs.

If things go well professionally, I'd like to go back to school and study visual arts, maybe even a photo school. I've got one in mind - I paid them a visit years ago, filled the application form but never sent it.

I do not hold social media accounts - I've not been drawn to them. RFF is the only community web presence I've held for a few years now - and that's because of the Photography here. The diversity, the accompanying chatter, the print swaps, the relative peace that come from all of your photos. Thank you.
 
nightlight said:
I was offered my first camera when at the age of 11, a Vivitar point-and-shoot.

Film was expensive where I was; processing even more so. So photography came in waves, here and there during my teenage years.

I was smitten with literature and wanted to pursue a journalistic career but after my first year as an intern at the local paper, it became clear that I wouldn't be able to make a living - so I went into a technical career and that was that.

A few years later I was hired by a press agency for a technical role. Bathing in journalistic excellence (my appreciation) and being so close to professional photo-journalists, I was inspired and decided to buy a camera (an EOS 66).

Since then it's been a stratified photographic life of buying and selling gear across continents; buying and giving away darkroom equipment; going from diversity (different systems, multiple lenses in each) to purity (1 system but a with a complete set of lenses). Lots of money went into those cycles. I've now ended up with a couple of Nikon F3s, an S3, a Rolleiflex and an Olympus Pen half-frame that I inherited. And books, a lot of books - too many and too heavy when I've had to move.

Professionally I shoot stock with D850s. I use that stock in marketing, technical literature , training material or just powerpoint slides. It's a sweet feeling to have a corporate presentation to customers where a slide has a photo that triggers conversations. They are my photos so I don't have to deal with licensing and redistribution rights.

Regardless of the gear - and I've been blessed to have owned a wide range: Leica, Hasselblad, Canon, Nikon, Rollei, Fuji - I've struggled (I struggle) with my photographic eye ('regard' in French).

I spend a considerable amount of time reading about photographers, visiting galleries and watching documentaries about photographers who talk about their work.

The only camera I'd like to own but probably never will due to cost is a Linhof 617. Seeing Wim Wenders' panoramic slides of Ground Zero was a marker in my photographic journey.

Finding a photographic voice (having something to say) seems to be an eternal quest. So I shoot a lot of photos but very rarely look at them. My film backlog sits at between 6-8 years, and growing.

To answer the question posed by the original post, I conclude that I now like the photographic art (the practice of expressing something with light and shadows constrained by a frame) more than actually making photographs.

If things go well professionally, I'd like to go back to school and study visual arts, maybe even a photo school. I've got one in mind - I paid them a visit years ago, filled the application form but never sent it.

I do not hold social media accounts - I've not been drawn to them. RFF is the only community web presence I've held for a few years now - and that's because of the Photography here. The diversity, the accompanying chatter, the print swaps, the relative peace that come from all of your photos. Thank you.
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I believe that the current firmware of the X2D offers a 6:17 format. I know if offers the Xpan format. The difference is 24:65 vs 24:68. That's close enough for government work. ;o) It is, of course, an internal crop, but the image is there in front of you, EVF or LCD screen; nice.

The "eye" or "regard", yes, that is what defines us. But it need not discourage us. Tschüß

PS - Attending art galleries, viewing films on shooters, reading their books and following them on-line could confuse, perhaps, rather than confirm. It could be like being in a room full of folks all expressing their ideas on "how to" but with no consensus, just a clamor of voices. OTOH this could just be a failing I have. I know that even my fave, Vivian Maier, would visit galleries some. Other than Maier no one has touched me with a style and eye as she has. I do respect a lot of shooters out there, lots. But Maier is the one who reaches into my guts.

PPS - OK, I just checked and the X2D offers 9:16 as "screen" and also the 24:65 Xpan.
 
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Between us we have kept many camera shops in good profits...

I'm chopping and changing Time a little here. My initial post covered my life 'til the mid-1960s. I have two 'essays' in the works dealing with 1965-1979 and 1980s, but those are proving to be difficult in many ways. Not so much the writing, but the recall. So many brain cells to sift thru, many of my day diaries have disappeared with the passing of the decades, and at times I find the memoris coming to light again are, to put it politely, "complex" - often things I had forgotten that still hit emotionally as I try to work my way through them. All of which is taking time. So I'm going... slowly.

TBPF, it's not much fun to be almost 77 and looking back on what and how my life was in my teens and 20s. As the bad old joke goes, it's as if in my head is a 17 year old screaming, WTFH happened to all the time?!?

Fast forward. 2012. The GFC delivered a bad battering my architectural practice and by 2010, while I had mostly rebuilt financially and was again in the black with most of the debts over 18 months repaid and some paid work coming up in the future, I had acquired two junior partners (for capital investment in a major office renovation project initially contracted for 12 months, but it went on for two and a half years and was a massivedrain financially and with my energy. I was in my 60s and no longer a young go-getter. Dealing with management who basically had no idea what they wanted or how to go about developing the project, also took its toll. My two partners had, to be polite, zilch social skills and often caused disagreements with the client. And the CEO's wife fancied herself a talented interior decorator, need I say more...

In 2012 when an offer came from one partner, I sold out. He wanted the business (and the two big contracts we had) for his son and daughter, recently graduated architects. So I grabbed the $$ and ran. Sadly, the siblings were unable to deal with the never-ending demands of the clients and lost the contracts, and the business closed. Amen to that, by then I was out, retired, and in a new life.

I took stock of my photo gear at home - 58 cameras!! It was time to offload. First the Hasselblads, then the Nikon AF pro SLRs, the Fuji GAs, an Omega 120, a Linhof kit, too many Leica M bits, the boxes of old 6x6 and 645 folders, P&Ss and old SLRs from charity shops. And so many accessories. I had three darkrooms and sold off two.

All this cleared the household, tho' by 2015 I still had to much it was time for a second cull. Given my dislike of Ebay and its buyer-centric biases I took until 2019 to do this. Just before Covid we decided to leave Tasmania (we had relocated to the Launceston for the mainland. Selling a house, disposing of stuff, cleaning up, clearing out took a year, and with it went a lot of the nervous energy that had kept me in my career for 20+ years. Finally we were back in Victoria and settled in a 'regional center' (= in Australia, a big country town), I'd had it, and I wanted no more to do with selling cameras or Ebay.

I also resumed my Asia travels which I'd put on hold for a decade for work. I stay in southeast Asia, mostly in Indonesia where I have friends in Java, usually for 3-4 months with occasional travel to other countries (Malaysia, Brunei, Philippines, one unfortunate trip to India and a brief visit to see friends in Sri Lanka - I left that country with the intention to never ever return, after having to deal with the worst blunt money-grab corruption by civil servants it has ever been my misfortune to have to endure). I then return home to pick up the pieces and do necessary things for a few months before again setting off to Asia, which is really my spiritual home. My SO is Malaysian, also happily employed in a managerial post in Australia and fully understands my need to be on the road and using my cameras, so I am in that way a very lucky person.

Next year I will have the pleasure (and also the aggravation) of traveling with my partner as we plan to see Taiwan and then maybe Japan, or I may go alone to Laos. It's good to have plans even if one's dotage, and I want to revisit those places while I still can. The old rocking chair with a cat on my lap and time on my PC at home with Netflix movies is fast approaching, but I'll delay this as long as I can.

Now my photography is changing. My interest in out of the way places and old colonial architecture is waning, and while I still travel I find I'm now slipping into a new life-state where more extended time at home, working with my archived images and organizing my hundreds all my photo folders into a coherent system, attracts me more than time on the road as a Nikon nomad.

Actually "Nikon Nomad" is rather a misnomer for me. Of late I've moved into Fujis, with brief times using an XT1 (sold), an XT2 (sold), an XE2 (still using, and loved) and now an Xpro2. The XT ergonomics didn't suit me but the XE2 is an ideal fit for how and what I see and want to photograph, and I hope to keep up this 'high' with the new Xpro2. The Fujinon lenses are tough lenses (solid metal) and of course have superb optics. So an old woofer, new ways...

Still using (now and then, when I can) my Nikkormat FT2s (1980s), Nikon F65s (mid-2000s), Rollei TLRs (1966-2017), a Contax G1 kit (2004), a Leica LTM (2019), and my Nikon DSLRs. Also a Lumix GF1 kit, and now and then two 1950s 6x6 folders, Zeiss and Voigtlander. While my film stocks last. Then my 'analog' period will finish.

I also want to offload more gear in '25. So yeh, it never ends.

My photography nowadays is mostly travel with some architecture but mostly 'happenstance' (= what I see and photograph when I'm out and about). I did a lot of stock photography from the 1980s until the markets fell over mid-2010s, things look to be picking up again post-Covid in this area but I'm no longer as keen as I was, too much effort and post-processing work involved.

In all it has been an interesting life. For my photography my best period was 1970-early 1990s when I was young and free, I had more time to travel and the means (costs were so much lower then), and had Ektachrome, Fujichrome and the lovely and long missed Kodachrome to play with. Digital colors are fine but for me nothing has ever surpassed the beautiful vibrant colors of 1950s and 1960s Kodachrome.

That's it from me for this time. Delving into my past and writing about it is difficult...
 
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Erik van Straten said:
It didn't.
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I think I understand what you're saying, and to say there's no change is an oversimplification, perhaps. I look at my earliest work; half a century later, the concerns are the same, the values that drive my work are the same, and even the subject matter is the same (somewhat; I now live 2,500 miles from where I did then). All that's changed is a greater mastery of craft, and a more sophisticated and nuanced evaluation of my subjects and my reaction to them. Gear? Full circle, really. One 35mm camera and two lenses 50 years ago, when I was poor. Then all kinds of toys, a prolonged immersion in digital (no, thanks), and a return to simple medium format systems (there's that greater mastery of craft) with fixed or at most a pair of lenses, again. Basic and simple. Landscape, both natural and social has always remained the concern. So, like you, if I had to reduce things to two words, I might also say "It didn't".
"We cannot step twice into the same river." True, and the world, and the world of photography, is that river, always there but always changing.
 
wlewisiii said:
You have my pity then. What doesn't change isn't growing but is instead dying.
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I disagree. So would Henri Cartier-Bresson.

So we are two against one, disagreeing with you. Ha!!

Your pity is misplaced, if well meant. I tend to the idea that it should be treated like love, and applied to oneself first. In time one realises how silly and what a waste of time it is, and grows out of it.

Everything changes on its own. Our cameras, like our teeth, wear out, or like our hair fall out. Film becomes too expensive. Darkroom chemistry goes bad and we stuff up processing. Everybody dies. The trick (for me anyway) is to keep things as interesting as possible until the end. As good Buddhists try to do, and sometimes succeed.

One of my favourite sayings is "time passes, everything changes". It can be comforting to at least try to keep a few things as they were, for as long as we can. As Erik has done, and so successfully illustrates with his marvellous images.

Sure, it's all futile. But should this matter? Buddhism, this. Some run around seeking change (and often as not end up with partners who are too young or too unsuitable or too expensive). Others seek comfort in sameness. Who is to say this is good or bad? It's what people do. Buddhism again.
 
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