Photography #1

A few months ago I went and purchased a Canon Rebel DSLR camera. I had been wanting to get into the creative areas of photography, to use my creativity to show the world the beauty I see on a daily basis. I spent a good chunk of change that I didn’t really have to spend. Being in graduate school and paying my own way means a shit-ton of loans and inevitable debt (watch out future boyfriend). I often struggle with what I like to call “buyers remorse.” The idea of buyers remorse is that someone purchases an item, may be expensive or may be cheap, and said person takes item home and begins thinking “oh my goodness, I should have saved that money for xxx!!” And thus the remorse kicks in and you grapple with keeping the item or returning it- more often than not, I end up returning it with the idea of “do I really need this.”

So back to my giant DSLR purchase, buyers remorse kicked in. I was feeling entirely too guilty and ended up returning it two days later. I did take it out and give it a test run. I loved the photos and playing with the manual mode. A few days later, I began day dreaming of such beautiful pictures and everything I saw those next few days, I imagined photographing. I found myself delving into the wonderful world of eBay in search of something to quench my interests. I had recently heard from a friend who suggested analog (film/SLR) cameras were a lot more fun. Thus, there I was pursuing the inter webs for anything I can get my hands on. I came across an auction for a Asahi Pentax k1000 SLR. It was an extremely reasonable biding price so I waited and watched and waited and watched and at the very last second I placed my bid…. and LOST! I learned my lesson on how eBay biding wars work and so I searched again and came across another Pentax camera for the same price….bid war began…placed my bid..and I became the proud owner of a used Asahi Pentax k1000.

So now what?

I had never even loaded a film camera in my lifetime. I remember my parents having one when I was younger- too young for them to let me touch their precious “moment saver.” I used a disposable camera all my high school career and didn’t even own a point-and-shoot until my third year of college. What in the world was I thinking purchasing a film camera?

I was thinking of all the beauty in this world that I wanted to capture and share. I was thinking of all the smiles and eye gleams of the folks I share my life and adventures with. I was thinking of how much being creative and artistic makes me happy and at peace. Thus, purchase justified- no buyers remorse.

A week later, my package arrived. I had purchased a role of cheaper color printed black and white roll of film and after a few hours of searching YouTube for how to load my camera, I was set to take photos. It took me about a week to get up the courage to take my Pentax outside and snap a few photos. I had no idea how to adjust for aperture, shutter speed, or ISO. I was just adjusting the focal lens for clarity and snapping a portrait.

After a small squabble with my brother, I started being a tad bit more serious with how I went about taking my photos. I looked up an introduction video on my camera: found here. I learned a lot in a short amount of time on my camera. However, putting it to use served to be a lot more tricky for me.

A month after purchasing my Pentax, I found a place in center city Philly called Philadelphia Photographics, they are the only film developing shop in Philly and they seem to be pretty nice folk that work there. I wasn’t sure if my camera even worked and so I took the film there with very little hope. A day later I picked up my film: processed, developed, and scanned for relatively decent price.

Now first and foremost, I need to say that the camera itself is in pretty decent condition- except one flaw. The film counter is broke. I can’t tell how many pictures I have left or have taken. Thus, I jumped the gun and only came home with 20 photos. Of those 20 photos, about 7 of them were for lack of better words “PIECES OF CRAP.”

Example:

The remaining 13 were a hit and a miss. Two photos were taken at the beach and thus mistakes were made on adjusting to the sunlight. One of the photos was a test photo of working with a sparkler, adjusting shutter, aperture and iso was not taken into great account. The rest were decent.

I am really excited to continue to learn about SLR cameras and how to use mine. I have so many ideas of things to capture that I am passionate about and I can’t wait to share some of them with you worldly folk.

So without further ado, here are the few photos that did not take a turn for the trashcan: