On Photography.
De Haan, BE 6.2003
Ever since I got my first camera in 1999, I have dabbled - mostly without success - in the art of taking photos. Because these often did not reflect what I was seeing, or indeed what I wanted to see, I often found it hard to turn this hobby into a habit and improve my skills. Despite this frequent frustration, I found myself coming back to it without really knowing why. Accordingly, I went through occasional streaks of capturing every moment with whatever device I had with me. Under the typical cliché that the best camera is the one you have with you, I gradually learned that it really doesn’t matter what device you are using. So I started with a Sony Cybershot DSC-F55 - which my grandfather didn’t know what to do with and therefore, much to my amazement, handed over to me. A couple of years later, my parents gave me a Sony DSC-P43 which gave me access to an optical viewfinder and zoom lens for the very first time. I wasn’t really concerned with the quality of the photos or with mastering any skills. There was something about capturing the moment that almost became a subconscious reflex.
After using various point-and-shoot cameras in the years that followed, I bought my first DSLR in 2010: a reliable Canon 1000D with an 18-55mm lens. Hardly the tool for a seasoned photographer (which I certainly wasn’t), it nonetheless literally opened my world to so much more than what I previously thought a camera could do. I started to experiment with various compositions and played around with the various settings that I suddenly had at my disposal. However, it was not until I really learned to work with my shutter speed, aperture, and ISO, that I felt sufficiently confident to leave the trusted full-auto mode behind. I managed to hone my skills for a couple of years but, like any skill you do not practice enough, I gradually forgot most of what I had learned and returned to using the camera again as a device for recording my life. And then the inevitable happened. Like with most people, the dawn of the phone camera and its pocketability, turned my base model DSLR into an obsolete dinosaur: too big to carry around and too old to equal the processing power of a smart phone.
Making my way trough various phones and even gaining additional cameras, I nonetheless felt that the abundance of options on a smart phone made me quite lazy. The turning point was a friend who, after moving out of our shared house in 2017, gave me an old Nikon EM 35mm that had clearly seen better days. Gone were the days of mindlessly taking photos of whatever I saw. Film makes you really think twice before taking a picture and, more often than you realise, decide to “not waste any film” and let the moment just pass by. With film also came new skills to be learned, most importantly that of successfully changing and developing your roll film. As I often use a film over the span of multiple months, I will never forget the disastrous outcome of having once lost an entire film due it not having been properly inserted into the camera. I may have just used an invisible camera and said “click” every time I took a picture. In hindsight, I learned to be less precious about my film but - it’s not cheap! - also to be more skilful in using it.
The changed perspective on taking photos that this camera gave me subsequently made me consider getting a new digital camera. This time I opted for a model that combined creativity with pocketability. Ticking both boxes, the Fujifilm X-E4 with a challenging 27mm lens has been an absolute joy ever since I bought it a year ago. I once again feel like a child walking through the streets and using the limitations of my camera (no zoom!) as invitations to either get creative or cease from taking a photo altogether. I have also started to edit my pictures in Lightroom, something I previously shied away from. I have subsequently become more interested in experimenting with the hidden layers and elements you can find in any picture without letting myself be dissuaded by the abundance of beautiful artwork that you can see on social media. The final step in my evolution has been to put my photos out there, in the world. And as I do not have any social media, I decided to put a selection of them - taken during trips to Colorado and New York last year - on this website. Much like my reasons for starting this blog, I have no illusions about these photos other than sharing the way I process the world and my life within it.