Reply To: Photography

How did you get started?

Believe it or not, it’s all trial-and-error.

I always had a minor interest in photography, but with film cameras I was afraid to experiment. Every shot costs money both in terms of purchasing and then developing film.

I bought my first digital camera (Canon A20) in December 2001 before I went on a trip to Eretz Yisroel. It was on that trip that I really began developing (get it? Developing?) an interest in the field.

I played around with my little point-and-shoot for about four years, taking it everywhere and taking pictures of almost anything that was willing to be shot at. After a while, I came to what I felt were the limits of that camera, so I purchased a Canon S3 IS in 2005. This camera had a fixed 10x lens, allowed me to control the shutter and aperture and other more advanced features. I did quite a bit of shooting on that camera for about three years until I finally purchased my first (and so far, only) DSLR camera (a Canon XSi) in April 2008.

I have never taken a class in photography. Everything I know is from practice, trial-and-error and reading.

Just to give you an indication of how far I’ve come…. I used to work in customer service for a major electronics retailer back in the mid 1990s. Whenever I opened up the catalog and saw that they had cameras for sale that did not come with the lenses, I could not, for the life of me, figure out why anyone would purchase a camera without a lens attached. Now I know a bit better. 🙂

The Wolf