Personal Camera History

An insight into my journey on this earth so far would have to include my slight obsession with capturing the moment in photograph. Those who knew me at a young age can attest to the fact that I was shoving my camera in their face at the age of ten. It only got worse from there. By the time I was in middle school I made sure to document every little area of my life. Stubbornly holding onto my film camera, I vowed to never switch to a digital. Why would I give up tradition for an object that was sure to become obsolete in a few years? In my middle school mind it made perfect sense. I paid for my film commitment, however, as the cost of printing every roll of film proved to be expensive on my paper route income. It was not until a digital camera was placed in my hands as a Christmas present that I would accept the digital age. Fueled by the ability to take pictures at whim and not pay with my pennies later, the amount of pictures taken sky rocketed to new extremes. Instead of just saving them on my parents computer, I transferred most of the photos to discs. Just recently I uncovered that stack of cds, and they are now fueling my Flashback Friday entries. My first camera was an Olympus with a shutter speed that amounted to a lumbering elephant with a broken foot. I would push down on the camera button and by the time the picture would actually take the subject had grown three inches and gone through puberty. Blundering ahead with no real skills or training, the next camera I purchased was also an Olympus. Perhaps I was taken with the name and believed I was a Greek god who wielded the powerful ability of seduction with my point and shoot camera. Or perhaps my dumb enthusiasm had gotten the better of me. Whatever the real cause happened to be, I was stuck with another digital camera whose shutter speed was akin to Buddha running a marathon. I plowed forward with this piece of metal garbage for another few years. During this time I tragically dropped a memory card filled with my Botswana bush adventures on the bottom of a bus and never found them again. The Olympus gods were out to make me suffer. How I lusted after the shiny and incredibly fast SLR Nikons and Canons that I saw slung around tourists necks in Annapolis. I knew my life would be better and more fulfilled if I too owned and cared for such an object. Finally Uncle Sam gave me a break. My senior year of college I got back a tidy tax refund that would either make my wildest dreams come true, or help pay for college. Unbeknownst to my father, who was collector of all things college money, I traversed to Best Buy on a rainy Thursday afternoon and bought my first Canon Rebel SLR. Joy and joyness commenced shortly thereafter.

So you may have wondered before why I take so many frickin pictures. And quite honestly, this short paragraph does not in fact answer that question. Therefore, I am sorry. There was no point to any of this. Below I have provided you with a few pictures from a little photo shoot in my parents side yard with my sister and next door neighbor. They were enthusiastic but lacking models. They know as well as I that “angry” is not the only emotion that models harbor. Models also emulate “hungry” and “crazy” and “I’m better than you.” Kidding.