A short story of photography according to me
I began playing with photography about 14 years ago (let's say it was around 1997) when I started my first job at photo lab. It was back in dark ages when nobody heard about digital photography and professionals were using either Canon EOS 1 or Nikon F4. My work colleagues taught me basics about how to manually set exposure on a camera - it was Praktica PLC. I got hooked pretty easily and soon I bought my first SLR Canon AE1. I was learning about exposures, about how focal length and aperture value determines depth of focus. I was doing this simply by making notes of camera settings every time I took a shot and then comparing results after developing pictures. As I said, it was in the dark ages when you couldn't download your photos from camera to your PC and look at EXIF info to see all set-ups.
I also made a dark room in my parents' tiny flat bathroom and was experimenting with black-and-white photography, staining my bathtub with developers, bleaches and fixers.
Then I decided that I wanted to change my camera and got Nikon F401 AF. I was using my Nikon for years but the world of the photography was changing and taking traditional photos on 35mm film stopped being good value for money. That's what pushed me into arms of digitals and I switched to Pentax K100D Super. And recently I bought Pentax k-r and I've been using this camera since, together with its standard 18-50mm lens and polarising filter. For macro shots I use close-up lenses 2 and/or 6 dioptre. For portraits I use one fancy dedicated Metz flash and 2 other "cheapos" together with wireless triggers. I also usually edit my pictures enhancing brightness, contrast or white balance or adding some filtres using free software Photoscape or Paint.net which are more than sufficient for my purposes.
I have recently started playing more with flashlights and try shooting some portraits in home improvised “studio”.
I take photos to put them into a drawer or on the walls in my house to enjoy them myself, but years ago (about 2001?) I send some to Baltic Photographic Competition in Koszalin and they were chosen for exposition. "Recently" I took part in National Trust competition and one of my photos was chosen for their advertising campaign for summer 2009 and was displayed on billboards across Northern Ireland.
I was also asked by my friend to do a photo shoot for a local amateur football club he was involved in - namely Sparta Belfast - for their promo calendar for 2012 and you can see some of the results in my gallery.
I also made a dark room in my parents' tiny flat bathroom and was experimenting with black-and-white photography, staining my bathtub with developers, bleaches and fixers.
Then I decided that I wanted to change my camera and got Nikon F401 AF. I was using my Nikon for years but the world of the photography was changing and taking traditional photos on 35mm film stopped being good value for money. That's what pushed me into arms of digitals and I switched to Pentax K100D Super. And recently I bought Pentax k-r and I've been using this camera since, together with its standard 18-50mm lens and polarising filter. For macro shots I use close-up lenses 2 and/or 6 dioptre. For portraits I use one fancy dedicated Metz flash and 2 other "cheapos" together with wireless triggers. I also usually edit my pictures enhancing brightness, contrast or white balance or adding some filtres using free software Photoscape or Paint.net which are more than sufficient for my purposes.
I have recently started playing more with flashlights and try shooting some portraits in home improvised “studio”.
I take photos to put them into a drawer or on the walls in my house to enjoy them myself, but years ago (about 2001?) I send some to Baltic Photographic Competition in Koszalin and they were chosen for exposition. "Recently" I took part in National Trust competition and one of my photos was chosen for their advertising campaign for summer 2009 and was displayed on billboards across Northern Ireland.
I was also asked by my friend to do a photo shoot for a local amateur football club he was involved in - namely Sparta Belfast - for their promo calendar for 2012 and you can see some of the results in my gallery.
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