Why Do You Use Your Camera?

[LCSmith]

Why do you use your camera?

It's funny.

I was thinking the other day about taking a picture of the stem of a fluted glass. The glass stem was thicker than usual and corralled the dim light from a single lamp in the room into a slim concentration of pure-focused yellow glowing shimmer and a silhouette.

Sometimes you just want to take the picture. Why? It's complicated. Let's save it for another time.

Now, the phone is in your pocket. It's pretty good in low light. You might want to print, so there is that to consider. Wide angle isn't ideal.

So I go grab the Rollei and a Rolleinar, and make a lovely thing out of light. I will agitate with vigor.

Why do you use your camera?

 

[narsuitus]

To make money so as to support my life style.

 

[jsrockit]

I love looking at and making photographs. It is my favorite art form. However, I think it’s also a form of therapy for me. Walking, thinking, and reacting ... just to put a frame around something makes me happy.

 

[emraphoto]

I love looking at and making photographs. It is my favorite art form. However, I think it’s also a form of therapy for me. Walking, thinking, and reacting ... just to put a frame around something makes me happy.

Amen to that. Mostly it makes me happy

 

[fiddle]

Same here, Therapy for me.

 

[Dogman]

Passion. I fell in love with photography nearly a half century ago and the passion has grown ever since. If I couldn't wander around and take pictures, browse online photography websites or read and view books of great photography, life would be less interesting.

 

[Richard G]

“Artists are more interested in making things than things made.” Michael A Smith (or was it his wife, Paula Chamlee, f11 magazine. Sadly Michael and that magazine dec.)

So getting out the Rollei, deciding which Rolleinar, remembering to mount the hood before mounting the viewing lens attachment and revisiting the magical view that all that palaver affords is all part of the deal. You maybe used the Rolleifix and your favourite tripod and miraculously your wife/girlfriend kept talking to her sister on the phone and twenty minutes of magic was grabbed from mostly nothing at all. You could say that you didn’t really need film in the camera, but that’d be going a bit too far.

 

[Richard G]

This is not off topic, a reprinting of another wonderful essay of Nabokov’s: “Man and Things.”

https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/man-and-things/amp

 

[Richard G]

“Artists are more interested in making things than things made.” Michael A Smith (or was it his wife, Paula Chamlee, f11 magazine. Sadly Michael and that magazine dec.)

So getting out the Rollei, deciding which Rolleinar, remembering to mount the hood before mounting the viewing lens attachment and revisiting the magical view that all that palaver affords is all part of the deal. You maybe used the Rolleifix and your favourite tripod and miraculously your wife/girlfriend kept talking to her sister on the phone and twenty minutes of magic was grabbed from mostly nothing at all. You could say that you didn’t really need film in the camera, but that’d be going a bit too far.

PS. Maybe you had to load a film. That itself is grand: opening the crinkly sleeve, the smell and the feel of the paper and the black backing and the tug of it all winding on...

 

[Axel]

My camerause has decreased over the last years.
It´s less important since the good old M6. And since there
are soo much easy ways to get a photo with f.e. an ultracompact
or phone.

I know the passion of using a well built tool.
But in this days my focus lies more on the picture than on
its taking.


Years ago a camera on my shoulder or in my hand represented the ability
to take photos for me. Today there is a camera all around me. Everytime.

 

[Glenn2]

A picture is worth a thousand words, a good one is worth millions!

I can photograph faster than I can write, just makes sense to use a camera.

Unusual things are often difficult to describe...... Snick..... (sound a Leica makes)

Glenn

 

[Kai-san]

It's a lifestyle. Too late to stop now......

 

[dmr]

Uh, 'cuz it's very difficult to take a photo without it! 🙂

 

[Phil_F_NM]

Because I don't like the look of standard doorstops.
Phil Forrest

 

[Ko.Fe.]

It might sounds odd in this fridaylish thread, but I have cameras to use them. As cameras.

 

[SlappyPeterson]

My main purpose for using a camera is two fold:

It's a connection to my father, who is no longer alive. I have many of his cameras, and using them feels like a spiritual connection with him.

To document the lives of my wife and children. Looking back on all the photos I've taken of them is very powerful for me.

 

[Pfreddee]

Just because.

With best regards,

Pfreddee(Stephen)

 

[Archiver]

I document my life, and photography, writing and recording are the means by which I do it.

I love the feeling of a good camera, the look of stylish design, and the sense of history that comes from using cameras from various brands.

Photography is a kind of meditation for me, the ability to make everything disappear except for the subject and the immediate world around me.

I really enjoy creating images that I like.

 

[Pál_K]

Partly to capture things before they are gone or changed.

For artistic photos - because I want to preserve what I see.

 

[MJ Buckpitt]

Because it gives me something to do while walking and listening to Donna Summer's I Feel Love turned up to 11 🙂