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

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.

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