Awkward Beginnings …
My very first photographic images, complete with lens flare, tilted horizons, missing body parts, unnaturally stiff poses and inattentive portrait subjects.
My family on holiday in Alexandra, 1963.
Above photos, from left to right: two family friend groups (1970), cousins in Canberra (1970), Sydney Harbour Bridge (1970), 7th form school trip to the skifields (1973), Mt Ruapehu (1973).
As you can see from the photos on this blog (1963-1973), I fumbled my way into taking photos. This foray into photography began at the tender age of 8, with a point and shoot film camera, no doubt a Kodak kindly given by my parents, that met with a sticky end when it was left in our family car in extreme Central Otago mid-summer heat, and melted!
My father was the family photographer, and took photos to record our family as my sisters and I grew up, as well as to photograph places we visited. He wasn’t exactly a teacher, so he didn’t pass any useful tips onto me, and I didn’t think to ask. The only thing I remember about him taking family portraits was that he insisted on us looking in the direction of the sun, in order to avoid shadows under our eyes. He was an expert at using a tripod and timer, so that he could run into the frame of family photos.
In the absence of any lessons, I learned by doing, and made copious mistakes, including chopping portrait subjects off at the knee, moving the camera while taking shots and having zero idea about composition! The double exposure shot of two separate families happened because I forgot to advance the roll of film between shots! Like my father, the only reason I took photos was to capture memories that included family and friends, and any places of interest I happened to travel to. There was no attempt to produce anything artistic.
However, with no one to criticise my work, I continued to take photos through the years, and began to figure out what made some photos better than others. It was so much fun taking photos of my four boys, from their earliest years, though I was still using cameras set to automatic. In those days I was more careful about how many photos I took, since developing camera film was not exactly cheap, so mistakes were costly. It was so exciting in the early 2000s to get my first digital camera, which was a huge 3.2mp! I did keep my film Canon SLR with zoom lens as well, but it took something of a back seat to the convenience of the compact point and shoot Olympus.
My advice, based on my own photography journey in the early years - just do it! And have fun along the way. It’s actually quite rewarding to look back over the years to see how far I’ve come from those unschooled beginnings.