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What Was Your Photographic "Aha" moment?!
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Dec 21, 2016 03:14:30   #
SharpShooter Loc: NorCal
 
Have you had a photographic aha moment?
Maybe it was the first time you developed film, opened up a Nat Geo mag and saw nature or travel shots, or a visit to a gallery. Maybe it was a piece of kit or a vacation to a far off land. Or maybe a friend with a camera!
For me it was a gallery visit to Pier 24 in SF about 6 years ago. I was studying how to use lighting but was having a lukewarm relationship with portraits. For me it was all wildlife and landscape.
Then I came face to face with a portrait by Hendrik Kerstens called Hairnet. A 50"x60" portrait of his unassuming daughter. The portrait was huge and I was absolutely blown away by the detail and color in that portrait. It actually looked translucent like it had depth and I could see all the tiny veins in her face just under her pasty skin.
At that moment I started going away from nature and more into the commercial realm. It's where the money is anyway!!!
So what is your AHA moment, that's had a profound effect on how you shoot, what you shoot or why you shoot???
Everybody probably has one or more. Or maybe you're still waiting to have yours! LoL
If yours involves a photo, feel free to post one.
So lets hear them.......
SS

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Dec 21, 2016 03:32:29   #
Leicaflex Loc: Cymru
 
First time in the dark room when the image of a photograph I had taken
started to appear in the developing tray. I have never forgotten my
excitement to this day.

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Dec 21, 2016 04:34:14   #
Nikonian72 Loc: Chico CA
 
In 1972, I purchased a Nikon F2 as my first SLR. I was in the Navy, stationed in Keflavik Iceland. Every weekend, I tried to go shooting Ektachrome and Kodachrome. We had to mail exposed film to Kodak in New York, and often had to wait 2-weeks for the film to return. Out of sheer economics, I became quite good at composition and exposure, resulting in conservation of film. My next duty station was an aircraft carrier, the USS America, along with 5,000 other sailors. From the Gulf of Tonkin, offshore of Viet Nam, we had to mail film to San Francisco for developing, and returning to the ship sometimes took 3-weeks or longer. Cramped quarters meant that I did my slide viewing in the mess hall, on a dining table. I would set-up my slide sorter rack, fill it with slides, and set aside the keepers into my illuminated slide viewer. Sometimes I would have 6 or 8 yellow boxes of 36-exposures each, viewing one box of slides at a time. Naturally, this activity attracted attention, as the mess hall always had foot traffic, 24-hours a day. Sometimes a half-dozen lookie-lous would kibitz as I edited my images. Inevitably, most were shocked when they realized I was keeping just 3 or 4 slides per box, and planned to discard the rest. Several sailors were quite unhappy with me, for not sharing my 'discards' with them. It was useless to explain, so I just said 'No'. Eventually, I was asked to conduct photo classes and project images about how to shoot scenics during port visits, as well as informal portraits, and other travel photography. It was common to have 50 or 60 sailors as the audience, and they asked pertinent questions. Back then, nearly every sailor had a decent camera, purchased from the Base Exchange, even though they had little idea how to use the built-in light meter, etc. On occasion, several of us would go shooting together, in interesting ports like Hong Kong, or Athens, Greece, or the Isle of Rhodes, or Majorca, Spain All of this focus on photography lead-up to me considering photography as a vocation, rather than just recreation. Before I left the service, I enrolled in Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, California, but that is a different story, for a different time.

Folding slide sorter
Folding slide sorter...

Illuminated slide viewer/enlarger
Illuminated slide viewer/enlarger...

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Dec 21, 2016 05:56:35   #
EnglishBrenda Loc: Kent, England
 
Nikonian72 wrote:
In 1972, ...............


A fascinating account Douglass, I look forward to hearing the next installment of your interesting life one day.

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Dec 21, 2016 06:22:03   #
cdunn Loc: Brevard, NC
 
My first day of editing in Lightroom 3; seeing the potential for creating some very satisfying images.

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Dec 21, 2016 08:32:09   #
WayneT Loc: Paris, TN
 
I think mine was the first try at a darkroom with my Dad. I think I was 10 and neither one of us knew what we were doing. Dad didn't stay with it but I did. The magic of watching those old B&W photos appear out of nothing just stuck with me.

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Dec 21, 2016 08:39:08   #
Bugfan Loc: Toronto, Canada
 
About a year of getting into photography around 1971 I discovered macro. So I started to shoot little things, usually flowers. What bugged me was that while the flowers were inherently nice to look at, the pictures really didn't do much to enhance them. Then one day I got back a role of slides and as I was projecting them I found a rose I had done. The picture, by today's standards, was terrible, the colours were muddy, the edges soft, the background terrible and the exposure was nothing to write home about either. BUT ... the petals of the rose had texture. In fact the texture was so clear I was tempted to touch the screen to see if it was real. I was in awe.

Alas it had taken two weeks to get that film processed and returned to me. So by then I had absolutely no idea how I managed to accompilsh that picture. It was another six months before I was finally able to capture textures routinely and also to understand the theory behind it. I guess this experience hit me as well because it illustrated what you could really do when you understood lighting and once you learned how to get the most out of your camera.

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Dec 21, 2016 09:50:06   #
LFingar Loc: Claverack, NY
 
Seeing the first photos I had taken with the lens cap off convinced me that maybe there was something to this photography stuff after all!
After that it would be seeing the first photo I had taken that I felt was good enough to hang on the wall. That keeps me looking for the next one.

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Dec 21, 2016 10:26:57   #
boberic Loc: Quiet Corner, Connecticut. Ex long Islander
 
There have been many. The most recent is about 3 years ago when I finally made the switch to digital. After seeing the first images on the computer, I was awed at how rapidly I could see a print

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Dec 21, 2016 12:12:00   #
SharpShooter Loc: NorCal
 
Nikonian72 wrote:
In 1972, I purchased a Nikon F2 as my first SLR. I was in the Navy, stationed in Keflavik Iceland. Every weekend, I tried to go shooting Ektachrome and Kodachrome. We had to mail exposed film to Kodak in New York, and often had to wait 2-weeks for the film to return. Out of sheer economics, I became quite good at composition and exposure, resulting in conservation of film. My next duty station was an aircraft carrier, the USS America, along with 5,000 other sailors. From the Gulf of Tonkin, offshore of Viet Nam, we had to mail film to San Francisco for developing, and returning to the ship sometimes took 3-weeks or longer. Cramped quarters meant that I did my slide viewing in the mess hall, on a dining table. I would set-up my slide sorter rack, fill it with slides, and set aside the keepers into my illuminated slide viewer. Sometimes I would have 6 or 8 yellow boxes of 36-exposures each, viewing one box of slides at a time. Naturally, this activity attracted attention, as the mess hall always had foot traffic, 24-hours a day. Sometimes a half-dozen lookie-lous would kibitz as I edited my images. Inevitably, most were shocked when they realized I was keeping just 3 or 4 slides per box, and planned to discard the rest. Several sailors were quite unhappy with me, for not sharing my 'discards' with them. It was useless to explain, so I just said 'No'. Eventually, I was asked to conduct photo classes and project images about how to shoot scenics during port visits, as well as informal portraits, and other travel photography. It was common to have 50 or 60 sailors as the audience, and they asked pertinent questions. Back then, nearly every sailor had a decent camera, purchased from the Base Exchange, even though they had little idea how to use the built-in light meter, etc. On occasion, several of us would go shooting together, in interesting ports like Hong Kong, or Athens, Greece, or the Isle of Rhodes, or Majorca, Spain All of this focus on photography lead-up to me considering photography as a vocation, rather than just recreation. Before I left the service, I enrolled in Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, California, but that is a different story, for a different time.
In 1972, I purchased a Nikon F2 as my first SLR. ... (show quote)


N, that's a great story! My big question would be...., when did that big, ugly Macro Bug bite you?!?! LoL
SS

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Dec 21, 2016 15:00:44   #
Nikonian72 Loc: Chico CA
 
SharpShooter wrote:
when did that big, ugly Macro Bug bite you?!?!
Early on, I purchased six (6) prime Nikkor lenses for my F2. One was a Nikkor 55-mm f/3.5 'macro' lens with an M2 extension tube, needed to capture 1:1 magnification. This was long before I discovered speedlights, so available light was my only illumination. It was not until digital cameras and modern speedlights made macro-photography so rewarding; I love instant gratification of seeing a properly exposed digital image on my camera's LCD screen.

Nikkor 55-mm macro lens + 27.5-mm M2 extension tube
Nikkor 55-mm macro lens + 27.5-mm M2 extension tub...

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Dec 21, 2016 17:46:26   #
strobe Loc: Central Iowa
 
My high school was 10th - 12th grade. As a sophomore I joined the staff of the school annual as a photographer. I too remember watching the prints develop in the tray. But my moment was the following year, just after Christmas. We had to send in the first few pages of the annual by Thanksgiving and the salesman came around after Christmas and talked to the annual's adviser. The salesman asked how much our budget had been increased and the adviser admitted that it was in fact decreased. WOW. Where did you get all those professionally done photos then. I was 4th in line as photographer, but the only one that carried a camera. The rest only had a camera when they intended to take a photo. As a sophomore I ended up with more pictures in the annual than the senior head photographer. As a junior I ended up with more photos in the annual than all the other photographers combined.

That and our adviser also took a few pictures and he went to the dark room after I'd been in there printing most of the day. He was surprised that there were no exposure 'test strips' and almost no improperly exposed prints. He asked me how I did it. I showed him how I set up the enlarger to print what of the negative I wanted, and set the focus with the lens on the enlarger wide open. I'd then stop down the lens until the image was all but washed out by the red safe light. Then open back up 2 stops and the correct exposure was 15 seconds. I worked that out as a simple time saving measure, but it also saved paper and chemicals. I found out later that he incorporated that in his training of future photographers for the annual staff.

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Dec 21, 2016 20:04:34   #
Nikonian72 Loc: Chico CA
 
strobe wrote:
I found out later that he incorporated that in his training of future photographers for the annual staff.
Well done!

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Dec 21, 2016 21:33:11   #
SharpShooter Loc: NorCal
 
strobe wrote:
My high school was 10th - 12th grade. As a sophomore I joined the staff of the school annual as a photographer. I too remember watching the prints develop in the tray. But my moment was the following year, just after Christmas. We had to send in the first few pages of the annual by Thanksgiving and the salesman came around after Christmas and talked to the annual's adviser. The salesman asked how much our budget had been increased and the adviser admitted that it was in fact decreased. WOW. Where did you get all those professionally done photos then. I was 4th in line as photographer, but the only one that carried a camera. The rest only had a camera when they intended to take a photo. As a sophomore I ended up with more pictures in the annual than the senior head photographer. As a junior I ended up with more photos in the annual than all the other photographers combined.

That and our adviser also took a few pictures and he went to the dark room after I'd been in there printing most of the day. He was surprised that there were no exposure 'test strips' and almost no improperly exposed prints. He asked me how I did it. I showed him how I set up the enlarger to print what of the negative I wanted, and set the focus with the lens on the enlarger wide open. I'd then stop down the lens until the image was all but washed out by the red safe light. Then open back up 2 stops and the correct exposure was 15 seconds. I worked that out as a simple time saving measure, but it also saved paper and chemicals. I found out later that he incorporated that in his training of future photographers for the annual staff.
My high school was 10th - 12th grade. As a sophom... (show quote)

Whoops, what happened to my post?!?! LoL
SS

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Dec 21, 2016 23:32:04   #
rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA
 
I entered college with two interests {besides my studies} - railroads and taking pictures {never have I been interested in the "technical" side, such as darkroom work, nor particularly in the artistic side}; my first interest led me to join the Purdue Railroad Club, and to make my friends in that arena.

The fall of my sophomore year, a friend and I were passing a hobby store when a model locomotive in the window caused us to get into a substantial discussion - he thought it looked good, but I was positive it looked nothing like the real thing {I was been raised within a few blocks of the tracks where it was allegedly used}. Eventually I determined that the model was a hybrid - it took the most attractive features from two different actual locomotives.

Several months later the Railroad Club had a guest talk by Jim Boyd, a professional photographer who was well-known for his photography of railroads. As he talked and showed things he had seen, I realized that the discussion with my friend had been caused by a lack of facts. My new motto became "Life means growth; death means decay; nothing stays the same", so I began to use my camera as a way of preserving the present as I then knew it.

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