When did you first fall in love with photography?

[imajypsee]

I fell in love with making photos

I fell in love with making photos

the first time I looked down into that big, bright, TLR type viewfinder. I can't recall whose camera it was, but probaby it belonged to my aunt because I have pictures of myself in MF made by her. I was five.
Subsequently, I kept dragging out the camera that my pa kept in the big closet under the stairs in our house and peering down into the tiny little finder. The camera was a Kodak folding "tourist" model that he actually took to war with him in the year before I was born. It made it through WW2 and came back to be marauded by a child. I think it survived; my pa eventually gave me a camera of my own, a 620 Brownie Hawkeye. That gift started me, at age 8, on the road to over 50 years of peering into viewfinders, onto enlarging easels, and, now, at a monitor, to the end that I find the same joy and wonder as that first look, that first time.

 

[sirius]

It's a beautiful warm fall day here, a nice time to float my favorite thread up again at RFF and see if there are any more stories you would like to add...

 

[charjohncarter]

When I saw this photo, not taken by me, used with permission:

 

[sirius]

Any more stories to add?

 

[Michael Markey]

My dad was always taking photos.
I loved looking at those he took in India and Burma in WW2 ( I`m sure that he should have been doing something else).
I recently found the first neg that I took .I must have been 12 and on a school trip to Belgium..
On the street using a med format Hawkette 2 which I still have although light leaks have now relegated it to the shelf.

 

[johannielscom]

Had an old Chinon Memotron CE-II I picked up from an internet sale, planning to make a profit from it. I had bought and sold before, but with the Memotron I shot a portrait of my 3 yr old son on the couch, in B&W.

That was it. I had the bug.

​

 

[DNG]

It was around 14 years old, I showed an interest from my dad, (who used to use a 4x5 Speed Graphic for weddings when was in his 20's), He was always photographing everything. I have over 15 large file folder boxes full of old Kodachrome's and Negatives and Prints to scan now. from his life (over 50 years worth).

He bought me a Voigtlander Prominent (V1) with a 50mm f/1.5 Nokton as 1st Camera and a set up a darkroom also.

I have been taking images ever since...

 

[Matus]

As a kid we had at home a simple (primitive would be a better word) TLR that was used here and then. My father later got a Zenit E SLR. Even though I had a small meter-less camera (something from Eastern Germany at that times - Beirette I guess) but I did not really get hooked at that point. During university times I got more and more attracted but could not afford the camera I longed for (Nikon F80 - based purely on a great flyer). After I finished I got a PhD position in Germany a decided to get a camera - but at that time (2003) digital evil was all around and I got an Olympus C5060WZ (a big P&S with magnesium body - paid 450 euro, sold for 300 in 2006 to get Minolta 7D which I still have, but use rather little).

Friend of mine had (and still has, and even got an old 6x9 folder recently) Minolta 9 (that is a great camera) at that time and was passionate about photography and painting. Somewhere around that point it started to get serious.

Soon I wanted to try film - Mamiya 6 was the dream camera, but was too expensive at that point, so I searched further and finally got a 4x5 Tachi and Caltar 210/6.3. Soon it was clear that this was not the cheaper way 😛 (lenses, film, scanning, ... you name it)

Story goes on, but this was the start. Once I developed my first film there was no way back.

 

[akptc]

It was the smell of the leather wrapped around my freshly-minted Zorki 4K that may Dad gave me for my 7th or 8th birthday. It still brings back warm memories of places and people that I haven't seen for well over 30 years.

 

[M4cr0s]

Fascinating thread!

My venture into photography is sort of two-pronged. Sorry for the lengthy story.

The first prong or reason was my dad (its always dads isn't it?), he had an interest in photography in his younger years (late 60s), he even learned how to develop film and so forth. He got a Petri FT, which is basically your typical cheap SLR of that era. Chrome and that wrinkly black stuff that feels so great to touch.

When I was a kid he showed me briefly how to use it, and I shot a couple of rolls. Later he got me a cheap Minolta (I think) 35mm compact. I never really liked that camera 😉 However I always used to play with his old Petri when watching the TV and so forth. It fascinates me and still do. I loved the solid click and the mirror wack up and down. I now own that camera and it works and don't leak. Shutter's on the jerky side though and the aperture blades of the 55 1,8 lens are sticky.

The second prong somewhat connected to the fact that I'm (legally) blind, or, almost. I've got a progressive disease/condition that renders me deaf and blind given a decade or two from now on (I'm 28). Some time in the late fall of 2008 I decided I wanted a reasonably modern camera when my better half asked what I wanted for Christmas. I had an old Nikon point 'n shoot that was rather crappy, at least in the way that it did not really inspire to a great interest in photography, being fidly with poor IQ. To make a long story short, I got one of them LX3s after some careful research. I'm sure most are aware of the reputation of that little camera, it is however unimportant, the important thing is that it fit the bill for me at that time and place in my life. Suddenly the fascination for cameras and photographs that had always lied dormant in me, but never really got the chance to flourish, burst forth and here I am. I own a few old SLRs, rangefinders and my main system is Nikon-based with lenses and strobes (for as long as I have the back to drag that beastly thing around).

I'd like to mention that the idea and concept that I want to leave something pictorial behind me when my eyes permit no such indulgences have taken more and more hold too. After all, I can always write the novels I got in my head when I'm blind but I can't really make photographs 😉 I have the last couple of years been working and studying on my own to understand more of this craft. That's what it is to me, I leave the artsy talk to others, more knowledgeable. I just want to make some "pretty pitchas" and hopefully a few that invokes feelings in others than just me. I am now slowly starting to do a little semi-commercial work, just recently I "got published" in a magazine, just a crappy ad consisting entirely of my own photo and design that I made upon request for work, but it is fun to see something you've made in print.

Keep the stories coming folks.

Mac

 

[Michael Markey]

It still brings back warm memories of places and people that I haven't seen for well over 30 years.

Got it in one 🙂

 

[Lilserenity]

When I realised I would never be a good painter.

I'm quite serious too, I always wanted to be able to paint, but my landscapes just well, they're awful.

In turn I have found myself enjoying photography much much more anyway, and as I have grown older I have found my interests and styles develop in ways where I would find a painting or sketch very inadequate at expressing myself.

 

[wgerrard]

On the beach in Florida when I was kid. I had some kind of little Kodak point and shoot. My dad had a Canon SLR. We both shot slides. Mine were better.

 

[Juan Valdenebro]

I fell in love with photographs from seeing my father's slides when I was a child: beach scenes of our family on vacation... I got hooked years after that, when my birthday gift (a surprise, 12 years old) was my first Nikon, and I shot B&W for the fist time... I started to photograph then for my high school newspaper... I wish I had some of those images, but sadly I never cared about preserving my prints or negatives during the first five years or more!

Cheers,

Juan

 

[chrism]

When I was 14 in 1972, I was given my brother's cast-off Trip 35 for Christmas (he had bought the first OM-1 with his student grant - so much for textbooks for med school!), and he had me use out-dated Fujichrome 100 slide film in it. A few rolls of that and I was saving for my first SLR, a Praktica Novoflex and a Russian selenium meter. FP4, HP4 and some Paterson chemicals (yes, they made them then) and I was using my father's 1950's Gnome tank and his old Gnome enlarger. After a summer job in 1975 I bought a Praktica with a closed aperture TTL meter, and when I went off to med school I wasted (a matter of opinion, I suppose) my grant on a Pentax K1000 in 1976. After a short side trip to a Rollei 35, I bought a Pentax ME Super after I was qualified and working. Then came a fallow period when my wife did most of the photography - at least I bought her an Olympus Pen FT half frame SLR. After two more early auto-focus Pentax SLR's (SF1 and SF10 if I recall correctly), Kodak chemicals and a Beseler Cadet enlarger there was another fallow period ending with an early Apple digital camera. Then the bug bit hard, with a Leica M7, M8, M8.2, Bronica RF645, M9, a second M7, two MPs and lately a Bessa III. Lately, the Bessa III and the MPs get a lot of use, the M9 not so much. There was a Canon G9 in there somewhere, along with a Sigma SD10, a Nikon D70 and also a Digilux 2, which now has the sensor fault and I should send it away for a free fix so I can sell it or give it away. I have kept my wife occupied with lesser Leicas - a C-Lux 2, V-Lux 1 and now a V-Lux 20. These days I try to develop one film each weekend, be it bulk loaded pseudo-Neopan from Freestyle in 35mm, or Tri-X, FP4 or HP5 in 120, always using Diafine and scanning with a Nikon 9000ED. I have a Tetenal kit waiting to be mixed, and some 120 Ektar 100 so there's more excitement in store. I'm loving the discipline of the fixed lens on the Bessa III and its big negatives. All in all, it gives me a reason to get up in the morning, and what more should I ask from any activity?

Chris

 

[julianphotoart]

"Interested in" photography was around 1983. But "falling in love with" photography was 1997.

A terrible marriage. It had just ended.

One day I went to a local camera store where I happened to have my film developed. For some reason, while waiting, happened to glance at display case. There was this big, ugly, hulking monstrosity of a camera (or at least I thought so at the time). It was an RB67. I asked to see it. The guy took it down and took it apart and explained it. I had no idea that a camera could be like that. I had no idea that cameras existed that used something other than 35mm film. Utterly blown away.

The biggest moment was when he took off the detachable film back and showed me the size of the rectangle (6x7). He said, "see the size of this opening? That's the size of your negative." "What, you gotta be kidding". "No, for real". "That's the coolest thing I've ever seen".

I bought the camera. I bought B&W film. I bought a light meter.

I went to Yosemite to figure out how on earth this monstrous thing worked. And it worked. Oh, how it worked.

I fell in love with the slow, calm, deliberate experience of making a photo. I wasn't snapping a shot. That camera was so slow (especially for someone who didn't know what he was doing) that I ended up experiencing the environment far more than before. I have such strong memories of the trips with larger format cameras where the whole experience is slowed down.

That's my love story.

 

[nikon_sam]

I fell in love with photography when I was about 8 years old...even if it was just the thought of photography...a little later I fell in love with photographs...most likely it had something to do with my parents (for what ever reason) subscribing to Life magazine...I just loved those images...

Fast forwards to today...I'm working in the darkroom and again loving the images...

 

[srtiwari]

I first used a camera around 1957, when I was 9, and my family lived in Kericho Kenya. My father was a Physician and had parties to which he also invited PremJi Bhai, the only Photographer in a town of 300. I was fascinated by the RolleiFlex he used, and convinced my father to get me a Kodak Box camera. My 7 year old brother and I would take pictures and run up to Mr. PremJi Bhai, who promptly developed the films, and showed me how to make contact prints. 🙂

Half a century later I still wonder at the magic of the images he made...


My father stood at 6'1" and was waaay shorter than this man with Acromegaly, who (legend has it) was 7'8" tall.

Here is one, of my mother as a young woman. She passed away at 89 , in 2007.

 

[doolittle]

I first took an interest in photography when I secretly used by dad's camera to take pictures of my toys, back in the early 70s. I remember first getting a stern talking to when he got the film back, but then showing me the slides that came out well. Slides are sadly long gone. In my minds eye they are of a robot toy in front of a mirror. I have the camera now, a Zeiss Ikon Contaflex, on permanent loan.

That and family slide shows. A strange mix of Nigeria in the 50s and my sisters making faces in the 70s and 80s.

Kind of forgot about photography for over a decade, and then the digital revolution got me interested again, and more recently back to film.

A bit like Lilserenity, I would love to be able to sketch (in the style of David Roberts Egypt drawings), but have been blessed with no talent in that area. Photography fills that need. Also have become a sort of curator of family history, both old and new as it were.

 

[Juan Valdenebro]

srtiwari,

Beautiful shot of a beautiful mother!

Cheers,

Juan