ROCKY JA Loc: Living in Burnsville, Minnesota

Hello everyone,

When I first started photography, it was because I thought at be an easy way to make money. All you need was camera, and film, and will to get out there an find a client. I didn’t make a lot of money, but it was a start.

That was then, and it was a living. I didn’t have time to stop and smell the flowers, and enjoy my craft. How funny it is, that so many years later, I finally enjoy going outside and seeing the world differently.

Now I appreciate what I see. The pastel colors. Artistic shadows, the drop of rain that runs off a branch of a tree onto it’s leafs. The first sign of snow excites me. its another place to venture out into the cold with my camera on the chance I may be able to capture the beauty of something I find special.

Now that I’ve reached the autumn of my years… I understand the importance of always seeing the beauty of things out there and taking lots of photos. Being an old guy, the only other thing I want to see, is an outhouse close by. LOL

So, I’m curious, why do you like photography? I’ll be interested to hear from you.

Have a great day, my friends.

Rocky

Photoman74 Loc: Conroe Tx

To capture the beauty set before us by Mother Nature,which is usually fleeting - to share with the unfortunate who do not see and to enjoy the challenge of presentation to those who see but are not present at that location and moment in time.

Racin17 Loc: Western Pa

I am not a professional phtographer, i enjoy taking shots for the enjoyment of it. Photos are good to save a memorable moment in time. I dont get into the art side of phtography but enjoy a good photo none theless. Its a learning thing for me. I find this is like alot of other hobbies/ professions, its not hard to take a picture its hard to make a photograph. I race RC cars and it lookg easy but to do it well is not. I think alot of people dont understand the dedication it takes to make a good photo. I have learned alot since being here, ant have alot more to learn.

donwae Loc: Gulfport, MS

Very good question. I would have to say for me it is getting out and enjoying the beauty all aroung us. To capture that moment on my camera, as I saw it, then process and print is something I can treasure forever.

RegisG Loc: Mid-Tennessee

Photography is a new adventure for me. I love what I see on God's earth and what I see in stunning photo's from photographers. I'm challanged by the complexity of light, shadows, camera controls, and software techniques. I don't intend on selling any photo and am not likely to dazzel many people with my abilities and places that I go. Sooo, I'm simply enjoying the capture of a moment in time and learning what it take to store and recall that memory.

Regis

bersharbp Loc: Texas

Making money from photography is is like gambling; the odds are against you. Yes I made a few bucks at it but I decided I didn't want to work that hard at something that was supposed to be a hobby. I now enjoy my hobby! I do know a few people that actually make a living from it, but not many that still manage to enjoy it as a hobby too.

wilsondl2 Loc: Lincoln, Nebraska

Because I can't paint. - Dave

Nic42 Loc: Cardiff, Wales

:thumbup:

SilverfoxDojn Loc: Long Beach Island, NJ

I guess I enjoy trying to improve all the time. I seem to see everything as a picture and wonder how it would look on my computer screen. Of course we all enjoy having others tell us how nice our shots are. Also enjoy hunting animals and birds with my Nikon and knowing after I "shoot them" someone else can enjoy them too.

Dave in Utah Loc: Southern Utah

Hi Rocky, Glad to reply - from a young man to this day I have always liked pretty pictures and stunning pictures and many of the documentary pictures of wars to experience in my mind what those people went through. My favorite has always been the calenders. The scenery, the puppies and kittens and the people of our country and our world and documentaries of all kinds of machinery. My passion here in this desert country is the cactus flowers in the spring. I am a dedicated amateur that finds the acorn now and then. Thanks for asking. Dave

EstherP

I grew up with photography - my Dad was a professional. The first camera I remember him using was a brown wooden box, and Dad hiding under a black cloth.
I was about 8 yrs old when I was allowed to borrow one of his cameras to take on a field trip with our class. Dad set the f/stop and exposure time before I left in the morning, and he had put a 12-exposure film in that camera. I still remember the wonder when he gave me the pictures a few days later: blurred, heads chopped off, underexposed in the shade, but they were pictures "I" had taken. Wish I still had them, no idea where they went. After that, Dad gradually made me understand why a different f/stop or exposure time, and after a few years I could change those myself, I managed to get sharp pictures, and the feeling of wonder remained.
Unfortunately, none of those pictures survived either. The earliest pictures I have, that I took, go back to when I was about 17 yrs old.
Even when I look at the photos I have taken in recent years, mostly of our grandchildren, the wonder is still there. I usually carry my E-5 with the two favourite lenses and the last year or so, a 1.4 teleconverter, and I always have a Panasonic Lumix P&S in my handbag - and always with the battery charged. Oh, I still manage to take blurred photos, or way under- or overexposed, but with all but three of the grandkids living far away (10 and 12 hour drives), my photos are my trip down memory lane.
And yes, I do also enjoy the photos of our holidays, the Crowsfoot glacier, that actually looks like a crow's foot, the Kodak moments photos from our train trip to Whistler, the black clouds in southern Alberta that shed rain not by drops but by the bucketful, I love to sit here and look at them again and again.
That's why I am a photographer.
EstherP

James R. Kyle Loc: Saint Louis, Missouri (A Suburb of Ferguson)

The question was - "Why do you take pictures"....

================================

As to the WHY I like to ‘take’ pictures..

After the ideal answer= “Because I can not draw or paint” - because I can do those things.... I can draw a schematic of an electrical and or electronic circuit and understand them. And I have painted my house (Inside and Out).

Forming an interest in the making of photographs at the age of about fifteen, only a “box camera” at the time. I have always had an interest for ‘how things worked’. In public high school a friend said that he was going to be the school photographer for the school newspaper, and ask me if I wanted to do that as well. “The school will let you use a camera that is really good.” He said - so I became one of the three photographers.

I started reading everything I could about the process of making photographs - Cameras - Darkroom chemistry - Lighting, natural and flash (Those #5 blue ones) and had a Double Reflex “Rolli” to use as well as my own Argus C-3 (that old BRICK - I still have it).

That was my junior year - By the time I was a senior, I was entering contests all over the area. I won the Scholastic’ Art Award for "Landscape Photography". I found that I could really do something that others could not - well, not like I did at any rate. It made me proud of myself, gave me courage at a time I really needed that. However, it was not to be my “profession”. My father did not think that I would make IT as a photographer - and said that I would enter the Electrical Trade as an electrician. Thus - Photography became my passionate hobby till I retired.

From the time I was in high school till 1974 I kept ALL of my negatives (and slides) in a large steel box. I lost everything in a fire that year. And quit photography, almost, completely.

Then in the year of 1982 I became a father, and that happened again in 1983... I got the old cameras out and rolled film into them and picked up where I had left off. I was in “my element” once again. Making photographs and developing in the basement darkroom. However.... There was a ‘change in the wind’.... Something named “Digital Photography”.

Coming from “chemical photography” into the “Digital Age” was liberating. I bought a point and shoot Kodak I think - model 520 - it was 1.2 megapixel. I read the book before I loaded batteries into the camera (I still do that with every camera I buy) and the next day loaded the batteries and went out into the yard. I made photographs of flowers, one of my favorite subjects at the time as they did not move very quickly. Liberating because NOW in the digital age, I could “take’ as many as I wanted to without the worry about the cost of film. I went NUTZ! The old basics applied to digital and there was something NEW to learn, LOTS to learn again.

Now I shoot with a Canon 5D Mark II - a Canon 60D as my ‘back-up - a Canon Xti converted to infrared - a good assortment of “glass” - And I still have my Argus C-3 “Brick” and yep, I still use it - along with my 645 Mamiya - I have my old View Cameras as well, A Ansco 8"X10" and two Crown Graphics, 3"X4" and a 4"X5".

Still a Landscape, River - Wildlife, Nature as well as portrait Photographer. Only now I am what is termed a professional as I make my living at my Passion - Photography.

And THAT dear fellow Photographers IS the WHY I do it - - Because I Can.

We, each of us, photographers teach each other to make better photographs - Let us all share and Improve ourselves. We need not prove ourselves, just Improve ourelves.

Thank you all of my friends... I really appreciate your comments and your friendship...

James..

PhotoArtsLA Loc: Boynton Beach

I have had studios and labs for decades, and embraced the digital darkroom (with Flextight Precision Scanner) when Epson debuted the 9600. Then, I just scanned Nikon, Hasselblad and Sinar frames, digitally edited them (yay!) and printed away without all the chemical hassle. A Hasselblad frame, scanned well, still outperforms just about all but the highest end digital imaging. Print your image 20+ feet wide and see how it looks! I know how 4x5 looks blown up that big via the Flextight. Amazing.

Stills photography led to cinematography, and so I shot movies and TV commercials, and this has continued to present day.

Now, with digital, the convergence and empowerment in the imaging world, combined with a shift in viewing habits has engendered a new impetus, so I am forming a movie studio for the digital age. I still have a strobe studio and now, an almost, at long last complete, Daylight Stage. Daylight is your friend if you can bend it to your will.

ROCKY JA Loc: Living in Burnsville, Minnesota

Thank you Photoman. Well said. :thumbup:

Rocky

Musket Loc: ArtBallin'

For the cocaine and strippers to do the cocaine on the backs of, and to get women naked for my model mayham page.