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.

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.

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

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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..

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