A Life Taking Photos

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Ever since high school, when my dad gave me my first camera, a Canon AE-1, I have been snapping photos. Back then, there were zoom lenses and extension tubes to screw on and rolls of film to handle carefully, protect from the light,and send in or take to a drug store to process. And that took a while. No smart phones in those days. And thank Goddess for that! I miss taking snaps with my old heavy, complicated camera. It was my art. It took skill as well as a good eye. As computer technology took off, my film that once came back in an envelope as negatives and prints became all that plus a cd or floppy disc with the photos, and I could access them all online through the mail-in developer I used, PhotoWorks. It was amazing and magical. After a while, digital cameras caught my fancy, lightweight and no separate lenses/attachments. They were pretty nice. Then the smart phone came along. This was good for my photography in many many ways but bad in many many ways as well. Let's start with the bad. It's way too easy to take snaps with a smart phone, dammit. And it's also way too easy to alter the photos. I'm all about capturing the moment and highlighting what Mother Nature offers. Some like to change the lighting, the colors, etc. but all I ever do to mine is crop them. I also kinda miss having to wait for my film to be processed before I could see how my snaps turned out. It gave me a fresh perspective when I finally saw the prints. I don't always like the instant gratification of seeing my snaps right away with the smart phone, although it is nice in some cases. So what's good about the smart phone camera? Ironically, the time I save. I can take a snap real quick to attach to a blog post if I need to. I can do it all online, electronically. I can work on my whims. There are no heavy accessories and lenses to attach. I just zoom in and out, etc. with the touch of my finger/thumb (I don't like blogging on smart phones. Give me a laptop with keyboard and let me type the old fashioned way.) For a while, I mourned the loss of my old heavy Canon AE-1. I felt it wasn't art if a snap was generated on a smart phone. But it is. The art is in the eye of the beholder. The art is capturing that perfect moment. I've taken some beautiful photos on my smart phone and I hope to continue for years to come.

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