More than you ever knew
This is me, I rarely take pictures of myself but i was experimenting with lighting, and I needed a subject. It's harder than you think to take a shot on a tripod of yourself.
Photography, the beginning of an Addiction
Lets start from the beginning. Since a kid, I have always had the affinity for gadgets or anything electronic, and cameras were no exception. I remember when I got my first camera, it was the red, plastic camera that you ordered from a cereal box, a kids dream, right? The camera took some type of film that was in some sort of cartridge that didn't need to be rewound at the end. I was in love. I took pictures of everything, then when I ran out of film, I had to get more. And that was just the problem, then I figured out film costs money, then if you wanted to see the pictures you took, you had to shell out even more cash. Heartbroken, realizing the value of money, I had to conserve my picture taking frenzy to a minimum. I can also recall playing with an old Polaroid Camera with Sonar Focusing, I had no idea what that meant I just told everyone it was magic. I can even remember when those disposable cameras came out, Kodak made a lot of money off me. When scanners started getting popular while I was in elementary school, I was amazed at the fact that my face could actually appear on a computer screen, something I never thought possible. Then something even more spectacular came out, Digital Cameras. I had to have one. Finding out the price of them was something to bring a boy to tears, but that seems to be a fact of life, you can never have what you really want, at least not yet anyways. Technology got better and better, as the prices of digital cameras kept falling. Finally in College, after much research, knowing that megapxiels don't equate to quality, I found a nice Sony P100, I even went all out and got a gigabyte Memory Stick, since I knew I would just go crazy taking pictures. After 2 weeks, and 500 pictures later, my camera was stolen as I was riding my bike, I was in shock. My camera, my memories, and my money, were all gone in an instant. I was back to square one.. er, make that square one minus $400. I was worse off than before I even had a digital camera. But that didn't stop me, i researched and researched and found a camera I really liked, the Sony F717, better than a point and shot, but not as good as an SLR. This is the camera that really started the "Steven's Photography Revolution". Even though it was big, I would take it everywhere, taking shots of everything from every angle, learning about how to correctly line a shot, and the list could continue forever. I even paid less for it then what I did for the other Sony I had, and this camera retails for three times the amount my old one did. Man I love eBay. I started to get where I thought I was taking some 'professional' quality shots, and my friends thought so too, but I didn't trust them, they could have been just telling me what I wanted to hear.. or maybe they were telling the truth, either way though, I wanted to master photography even more. After having the F717 for over a year, I finally decided I was hooked on photography, and there was no turning back. This meant that I was willing to spend all my money on camera equipment, and I did just that. After selling my old F717 on eBay for more than I bought it for (eBay is amazing folks, I can't stress that enough, ha), I bought a Canon 30D Digital SLR camera kit on eBay. It was beautiful sitting in the box, I was afraid to pick it up. As I did, I had forgotten how many knobs and dials the camera had, I flashed back to holding the old Polaroid we had as a kid, as I flashed forward to the present again I had the same feeling i did as a kid holding the Polaroid, I knew the camera was amazing, but I had no earthly idea on how to use it. I knew there was an automatic setting, but that seemed too easy. Automatic? What's that? Automatic is for pansies, I thought, and since the he dial on my camera has never been set on automatic. Now I have this amazing camera, but i was lacking the ability to use it. I bought a few books, and within a week I was adjusting the aperture and exposure times without even using the light meter, I tend to learn quickly. I have had the 30D for a little over year, and I have taken over 10,000 photos on it so far. Addicted? I think so.