Photographically, I was a late developer, if you’ll pardon the pun. Actually, I did try my hand with film cameras, but the delay between taking the picture and seeing the result was just too long for me. I took up photography again when my partner decided to do an Open University course in digital photography. We spent many, many hours taking walks together and discovering places to take the pictures associated with her course work. Spending time together was wonderful, but hanging around while she painstakingly set up each masterpiece became a bit boring, so I bought a new camera so I could take my own pictures.
Fast forward one year in which we joined a camera club and learned the craft in more detail. I wholeheartedly recommend joining a camera club if you have a camera and want to improve your skills; the friendly and helpful members will give you tips and guidance, helping you with the inevitable competitions, while the grumpy ones will tell you that it took them thirty years to learn what they know and don’t see why they should just ‘give it away’!
When I retired from a career in IT, I had more time for my hobby and also began helping a wedding photographer who had lost his ‘second shooter’ who had moved away. Though demanding physically, I enjoyed the work and learned so much more about real, practical photography. Like many amateur photographers, I acquired an enormous amount of ‘gear’, believing like those many, that if I just had that camera or that lens my pictures would be so much better. That last is a complete fallacy, but it seems you have to go through it. Golfers, I’m told have the same syndrome. However, because I had ‘the gear’ I was well placed, when asked, to make video recordings at weddings and other events where a professional job was out of the question financially. It also meant I was back on a learning curve which I found exciting and rewarding. For my wedding photographer friend it meant that he had to work harder at some events as he had to do first and second shoot, but the happy couples got a movie showing edited highlights of their special day.
I enjoy video work, but it is hard work. Every aspect of an event has to be covered, but several hours of footage edits down to just a few minutes of end product. Totally worth it, but the techniques of photography and videography are very different. Basics, like composition and exposure, are relevant to both, but preparation and processing can be poles apart. I hope you like the images and clips on my simple presentation here.