I’m taking pictures with a camera again. 📸
Back When Five Hundred Dollars Got You a 5MP camera
About fifteen years ago I walked away from digital photography for a couple of different reasons. First, and the most pressing issue at the time, was the world events going on in the world around me. The United States had just been attacked, and we were going to war with terrorism and the act of walking around and taking pictures of things, especially architecture and things in the city raised suspicion, as everyone in the world seemed to be weary of everyone else in the world who were not themselves.
Also at this time, I was only using digital cameras that would be considered “point and shoot” cameras. Only being fascinated with the idea of photography, I never spent a single day in a darkroom in my life when photography was still analog. It was definitely interesting to me at that time, but all my creative endeavors had roots that were pixels, nothing organic with perhaps the exception of writing – and we’re not any good at that despite how engaging we may find it to be. Because point and shoot cameras were my jam, I didn’t have my head too far into the DSLR arena, but it was that exact learning curve that prevented me from taking my admiration of digital photography to the next level. Shutter speeds, ISO and aperture were the only terms I knew how to pronounce, and that was about it. (I’m “Team EYE-S-OH” by the way.)
Lastly, and perhaps the most disappointing, is I sort of forged myself into this narrow channel of thinking that had me under this spell of distaste for creative pursuits and surrounded myself with scenarios and people that reinforced this idea. One guy having a bad day is one thing, but a group of them acting as a support network and echo chamber for like-minded low vibration individuals is a completely different shit-show. It turns into a pissing contest of who can achieve the most disgraceful acts of human existence, and other acts completely absent of self-respect, morality, or both, and somehow maintain this as a lifestyle. That’s getting a little bit too far out of focus tho.
With a renewed interest in taking photos, I find myself with a desire for a place to put these photos for public engagement and to perhaps connect with others who are in the same boat I am. SmugMug seems like a fantastic option for backing up photos and displaying them in a way you like, and they are after all the new key holders of the once famed Flickr empire, but the takeover seemed to be quite hostile and the aftermath of that takeover is seemingly where Flickr’s progress has found itself frozen in time.
The state of Flickr is probably the most disappointing thing I have come to discover on the web in quite a long time. In many ways it seems frozen in time like Last.FM but there is a lot of crappy spam going on within the domain as well. I started the /geeks group all those years ago, and on the main thumbnail of the photostream there is some random nude photo. How sad. LiveJournal and Flickr were the closest thing to a thriving community that I have contributed to in my short lifespan online, and so it’s very disappointing to see how far into disrepair it has fallen. Early Web 2.0 was so much fun.
A post on Quora pointed out something very valid indeed. When asked why Flickr has lost its relevancy, one Peichen suggested that the photo sharing market has fragmented.
We can definitely say this has been the case. That response is eight years old in 2023. Removing the hurdles that people had to jump over in order to get their photos from their devices to a computer in order to upload them to the web is something we’ve always had to deal with. The advent and widespread usage of the iPhone probably was just the icing on the cake that websites like Flicr needed to put them far down the public’s consciousness almost to the point of irrelevancy.
Random pictures of this or that, which was sort of the overwhelming backbone of Flickr’s public photostream back in the day, is now on Instagram. What made a Flickr group amazing back in the day is now just a hashtag, also on Instagram. Higher quality things have evolved to the point where only professionals move around blocks on a screen, but all essentially display their work in some form or fashion by way of SmugMug and have monetized the shit out of everything. Apparently, the largest online photo storage is Google Photos. I guess they put up their walls, didn’t they?
I’m not bending the knee to Instagram. I setup a trial with SmugMug and I really do like it but there was something that really drew me into Flickr back in the day. I met some people on that website I still correspond with to this day. That was the power of the community during the days of Web 2.0. There seems to be none of that on there anymore, and it really saddens the hell out of me. All these GIF responses and links to other websites, it’s just nuts. All such superficial nonsense. Maybe that’s all it was back in the day as well and because it was a new technology, it didn’t seem like it. There was no social media in the modern day traditional sense. Flickr was social media. Part of me just wants to dive back into and see if we can’t find the greatness that once existed.
Camera specifics
Canon all day. Sony apparently makes the best cameras on earth (the Xperia PRO-I 5G does look amazing), and I’ve been told that they supposedly make all the lenses for all the cameras on phones. Either way, I’ve always had a soft spot for Canon and I don’t know why. I think it’s probably because I always wanted the T7i (pictured above) back in the day when I came out and always thought it to be unobtainable for a schmuck like me. But let’s make one thing perfectly clear: I am a fucking nobody. Working-class fucking nobody. So I’ll never find myself in a place where I’m spending 4 and 5 thousand dollars on a camera body. I bought myself a Canon RP (pictured below) and a handful of lenses. One of those lenses costed more than my MacBook did. I’m playing with some pretty expensive toys for a working class nobody like myself and really enjoying every minute!
I spent several weeks researching cameras before I finally pulled the trigger on one. I have to be quite honest during my research I took quick notice of a sentiment among the photographer community that would suggest people like my self should stay far the fuck away from their craft. Fancy “I make a lot of money” types all over this arena. Looking down on us pheasants. You scummy poor people with your shitty little cameras.
However, when I look back at the 30,000 photos that I took with all my garbage cameras back in the day, all the same feelings are invoked that I had in the moment that I was taking those photos or videos, regardless of its original quality. So I really don’t give a shit about having the most expensive equipment. I’ll be able to cut and bruise myself just as easily with a camera much like the one I purchased.
Something else definitely worth pointing out. A bunch of my old equipment from back in the day was in an attic from all these years ago. One of these things was my old tripod, which I cleaned up, and set up just to see if it could support the Mirrorless Beauty. Not only could it support the camera, when compared side-by-side by the entire lineup provided at Best Buy in 2023, the only thing that comes close in regard to build-quality starts at about the $200 range, and I can promise you this I did not spend $200 on this tripod back in the day! One can only assume that the manufacturers of these things are under the assumption that most people are buying them to only support a smart phone.
Learning things I’ve been avoiding for 20 years
This amazing video by Chris Bray has broken down the specifics of digital photography that have prevented me from achieving new heights in my understanding of the craft. It’s one of those videos that make you so happy that YouTube exists in the first place, and in regards to the video itself – the passion of this guys understanding of photography and his willingness to share that information is something that just blow my mind. The comments section of the video are some of the best comments I have read in a long time. One guy even mentions something about the video restoring his faith in humanity. It’s just so great.
I am spending more time in study than anything else right now and have a gay ol’ time doing so. It’s bonkers. White heat for photos. I feel more in touch with myself than I have in a long while. I’ve only taken just shy of two thousand photos but my head’s spinning with all the crap these lenses are capable of. Back at it then.
You don’t take a photograph, you make it.
Ansel Adams
