I came here from LGR.. As support. But then I got hooked. I really dig all your vids. From honest talk, to your comedy. I got hooked on your channel. Personally I almost have a fetish, called black and white, but I love your vids on different films, and your walks aroung town... Keep up the good work, and keep doing ya thang! It is entertaining and mixed with your mindshit, it is a recipe for success....
I shoot to get out of the house, as therapy in a lot of ways to try to recover from bad depression. It lets me explore, and interact with the world around me in a way that I can decide when and where to stop, and how those interactions happen. Lately, I've also been shooting a lot with an old russian medium format camera, which offers its own sensibilities. It also requires even more patience than 35 mm -- the composition process is even more methodical because I only get twelve shots on a roll, and its light meter doesn't work so I have to also consider if I want to pull my phone out to do metering, what exposure, stopping I want to shoot at, etc. It's a fun, but patient process, that's helped me recover.
I started shooting as just a hobby. It was easier to get into than a lot of other outdoor hobbies, and you even get to have physical evidence of it as a by-product. It's kinda turned into me wanting to remember places that are important to me or documenting old buildings around me that are abandoned and bound to be demolished in the near future. In the end, I just shoot because I like to
My memory is also not great and photos help me a lot to remember something I might forget otherwise. I also need to remember take time to really look at the thing I'm taking a picture of with my own eyes rather than just through the viewfinder. Sometimes the moment itself is lost because I'm too focused on preserving the memory of that moment. There's also something about preserving a moment in time. Even the small things that seem like they will always be there, might be gone some day, or not the same any more. A photo is like an attempt to stop entropy. To keep something alive in memory that's gone. Is that futile? Or is it something we need to do to keep going, and ultimately to see the transitory nature of things and deal with that.
Why do I take pictures? Well, the short answer is... documenting the world around me. The long answer is... well... longer. First off, my primary concern isn't documenting my own life. Ultimately in the grand scheme of things, my own life isn't that important to other people. My name will be forgotten one generation after I die. Rather, I wish to document the world around me. I'm a bit of a historian. Not professional, but I do have an amateurish interest in history. And I know all too well the problem that history books inherently contain. You see, humans by our very nature have terrible memory and ability to recall events. Even if someone was a direct witness to a historic event, they will not be able to accurately recount it with perfect detail. Just ask any cop that has a witness to a crime in an interview room. And once you retell that story from person to person, after a couple retellings... the details are completely twisted and incorrect. It's nothing malicious, I'm not claiming there's some huge conspiracy... it's just human nature. Now... here's a cliche for you. "A picture speaks a thousand words". I'm sure everyone and his brother has heard that phrase. Most importantly, a picture speaks a thousand ACCURATE words. No matter how much time passes, that picture will always accurately detail exactly what happened in that moment in time. Whether it's a speech from Martin Luther King, or that famous street execution photo of a man in Vietnam, or the V-J day photograph from 1945 with the sailor and nurse. Those moments will be preserved in perfect accuracy for as long as humanity is alive to keep them. Images to remind us where we've been, and perhaps to keep us from going there ever again. Now why do I shoot film? The answer is pretty straightforward. We're talking about digital vs analog photography. The definition of analog is something that can be interpreted by a human directly. In the case of photography, we have film negatives. Digital photography requires a computer and software to convert the images from digital to analog. So I shoot film so as to offer up a format for generations in the future to easily view and print as desired, with whatever technology they might have. Even if that technology no longer exists, they can always look at the negative to see the image.
I looked at my pic "stack" and what I see is that most of the pics I take are of my work (knitting, drawing, crafting) and continuity pics (I used to work as a Script Supervisor) :D so I'd say that I take pics of my work(s) in general :D
I started taking photos using point and shoot film cameras and the results were mostly garbage out of focus and blurry. When I switched to digital in the mid 00s, I was taking photos of nature and I love studying nature and wanted to photograph as much of it as I could find, particularly butterflies and moths which I have been studying since I was a child. I then moved onto photographing landscapes and wild plants. A few years ago I did a photography project on old buildings as I started to get interested in the history of old buildings and what is being done to preserve them, especially since I once lived in a 250+ year old farm house and have visited a 300+ year old house and learned about the 350+ year old farm house my great grandparents lived in before it was torn down in the 1970 or 80s. Now I take photos not just of nature, but of landscapes, people and places to preserve a snapshot of what a place looked like at that time. I am a historian and love seeing what places looked like in the past, especially since I started doing a lot of genealogical research into my family history and learned about where my family lived in the past and how the areas looked when they lived there, compared to how they look today. One of my goals though is not just to take photographs of people and places, but I seek out the small details in a landscape, old building, nature etc... to try and document visually and write about as much detail about a place as it looked at the time I took the photos. What really started me doing that was photographing wild flowers and tiny insects and noticing the amount of detail and colors many of them had, which are easily overlooked due to their small size. Doing this drew me into seeing what other overlooked details are out there which people often miss that I could photograph, write about and preserve for present and future generations to see, so maybe they could appreciate some places and the little details more.
I missed the original posting as well, but my picture folder is dominated by my kids, and what they are doing. After that, are things that I do at work. I love taking pictures of nature, but I don't get a lot of time to do that anymore.
I don't, even if i want to because smartphones have made it too easy(as i always have a camera) but also too much work(as smartphone cameras are a pain to use). When i have a proper camera with me i do it because its fun. Using old digital cameras mostly.
photography was the first artistic medium that i got recognition for being good in. when i was like 13 i took a picture of rubber ducks in my sink for an art project in school and happened to catch a water droplet from the faucet midair. it really isnt that great of a photo since i added a bunch of stupid edits to it in photoshop but for my age i felt good about it since my teacher, my mom and my friends liked it. before i just made poorly drawn doodles so to feel personally artistically accomplished and to get genuine praise for something at that age was cool. my mom has also been a photographer for over 30 years so i was around cameras and stuff as a kid so it was a convenient hobby to get into since a lot of the tools were easier to get my hands on. i got a sony a100 and a couple lenses when i was 15 and through my first few years of constantly shooting and editing photography became the main thing that i really took pride in my craftsmanship of.
Appreciate your response! This actually inspired me to focus on more than exclusively the act of capturing physical evidence of a memory, and rather allowing my framing to put emphasis on the other details of what's around whatever it is I'd like to take a picture of. I think concentration on more detail leads to a stronger connection not only to the picture, but to the memory itself, so I think I'll give more effort towards not treating a camera like a Pokeball. Great video!
I mean, treating a camera like a Pokeball is basically how photography got started. Just science and record-keeping. Like I said, all personal reasons are valid when it comes to photography - but I'm glad you got something from the video! Happy shooting!
Awww man, I missed a chance to be a part of the creative process involving one of my favorite TH-cam channels! I enjoy capturing the moment in time as it relates to my subject. Hoping to preserve that fleeting instant, and perhaps hoping to reach out across the distance of time to whoever the viewer might be. Seeing and relating an interesting view or angle, looking at something askew, taking both the ordinary and extraordinary and freezing them in silver.
Watching this got me to dig around for my first digital camera, a Fujifilm FinePix A101. Having that camera turned me into the family documentarian back in 2003, impulsively taking pictures wherever I went. After that I was part of the Lego building scene on Flickr, which surprisingly is what helped me improve my technique. Then after that taking pictures at anime cons was really a given when you and all of your friends cosplay. Simple as it sounds, I shot photos for the fun of it. Unfortunately, as an adult I had a dismal years-long tenure with the Carolinas' very own Portrait Innovations as a photographer/manager, and it killed the fun of photography for me. It's been years since and I honestly haven't yet gotten that sense of fun back. But seeing this video really made me remember some of what I felt back then, holding a camera. It got me to look back at my first camera, my old pictures, and smile. Thank you for that.
Dave twig plant leaf here, I’m out there :). I never even considered how that answer might end up in a video, but I appreciate it. Thank you for taking the time to share this subject and your thoughts. You’re absolutely right, the medium doesn’t really matter. It’s hard to keep nuance in tweets, but I mostly meant that I lost the creative energy along the way, and am hoping to find that again someday. I used to see photos everywhere I looked and I had a stronger desire to capture those moments -which is why I always brought a camera along too- but it’s not always easy to keep that desire it seems. I sometimes still get a tiny bit of that, which is why I’m grateful phone cameras are as good as they are. I’ve been thinking lately of finding a way to revisit photos I’ve taken over the years, maybe share them somewhere, one at a time. It might be nicer than to have them just sit there in an archived folder. Mundane as the subjects might be, maybe someone out there couple enjoy the snippets of life from another part of the world, too. Anyway, thank you again. It’s always interesting to hear your thoughts. Cheers!
Dave twig plant leaf! So happy you stopped by! Keeping the creative energy is one thing I constantly struggle with, so you're not alone in that. This is just my two cents, but I think you should absolutely revisit stuff from your yester years even if it's for nobody but yourself. Whenever I look back at older stuff I shot, I always gain a new appreciation for either where/who I was then or where/who I am now. Sometimes it helps me get a tiny spark back, too. Cheers!
I never was too much into photography until around 2003-ish when I got my first digital camera; an HP Photosmart 735. I'd just snap whatever for a long time until I discovered the macro mode was pretty good on it. Got into takng pictures of plants, flowers, insects, etc... I still use it to take pictures of album covers for my vinyl blog.
For me it is capturing things that catch my interest out hiking. Photography helps motivate me to go out and see things instead of sitting around all day. I've made the switch from digital to film and find that much more enjoyable too even if I'm lugging around massive Nikon film cameras with me.
Thanks for sharing my comment about photos and creating memories! I agree that act of taking photos cements that moment a little more securely, it also makes it easier to slip back and remember the details of the moment as it was occurring. Even mundane photos have a little more shine to them, because you took that moment to stop and take the photo, it can show how your interests or environment changes over time, or even something simple like the length or style of your hair. Thanks for the great video and the opportunity to comment!
You look a lot like lgr
He's my older brother, so that makes sense!
Wait.
Clint, what happened to you?
You look kinda different.
Its always cool to hear passionate people talk about things they enjoy. I think I get it a bit more now.
Missed the poll, but I take pictures of what I found interesting, beautiful or moody (fitting the current mood).
Thanks for the discussion, Luke.
Thanks for joining in!
I came here from LGR.. As support. But then I got hooked. I really dig all your vids. From honest talk, to your comedy. I got hooked on your channel. Personally I almost have a fetish, called black and white, but I love your vids on different films, and your walks aroung town... Keep up the good work, and keep doing ya thang! It is entertaining and mixed with your mindshit, it is a recipe for success....
Thanks for the kind words!
Your mic looks to me like a lathered up shaving brush. I kept expecting you to start swirling it on your face
I don't even dabble much in photos but I love your channel, keep it up
I shoot to get out of the house, as therapy in a lot of ways to try to recover from bad depression. It lets me explore, and interact with the world around me in a way that I can decide when and where to stop, and how those interactions happen. Lately, I've also been shooting a lot with an old russian medium format camera, which offers its own sensibilities. It also requires even more patience than 35 mm -- the composition process is even more methodical because I only get twelve shots on a roll, and its light meter doesn't work so I have to also consider if I want to pull my phone out to do metering, what exposure, stopping I want to shoot at, etc. It's a fun, but patient process, that's helped me recover.
Keep going mate, hope my tiny interaction on here helps for now and the future. YNWA
YNWA babyyyyy
I started shooting as just a hobby. It was easier to get into than a lot of other outdoor hobbies, and you even get to have physical evidence of it as a by-product. It's kinda turned into me wanting to remember places that are important to me or documenting old buildings around me that are abandoned and bound to be demolished in the near future. In the end, I just shoot because I like to
My memory is also not great and photos help me a lot to remember something I might forget otherwise. I also need to remember take time to really look at the thing I'm taking a picture of with my own eyes rather than just through the viewfinder. Sometimes the moment itself is lost because I'm too focused on preserving the memory of that moment.
There's also something about preserving a moment in time. Even the small things that seem like they will always be there, might be gone some day, or not the same any more. A photo is like an attempt to stop entropy. To keep something alive in memory that's gone. Is that futile? Or is it something we need to do to keep going, and ultimately to see the transitory nature of things and deal with that.
Why do I take pictures?
Well, the short answer is... documenting the world around me.
The long answer is... well... longer. First off, my primary concern isn't documenting my own life. Ultimately in the grand scheme of things, my own life isn't that important to other people. My name will be forgotten one generation after I die. Rather, I wish to document the world around me.
I'm a bit of a historian. Not professional, but I do have an amateurish interest in history. And I know all too well the problem that history books inherently contain. You see, humans by our very nature have terrible memory and ability to recall events. Even if someone was a direct witness to a historic event, they will not be able to accurately recount it with perfect detail. Just ask any cop that has a witness to a crime in an interview room. And once you retell that story from person to person, after a couple retellings... the details are completely twisted and incorrect. It's nothing malicious, I'm not claiming there's some huge conspiracy... it's just human nature.
Now... here's a cliche for you. "A picture speaks a thousand words". I'm sure everyone and his brother has heard that phrase. Most importantly, a picture speaks a thousand ACCURATE words. No matter how much time passes, that picture will always accurately detail exactly what happened in that moment in time. Whether it's a speech from Martin Luther King, or that famous street execution photo of a man in Vietnam, or the V-J day photograph from 1945 with the sailor and nurse. Those moments will be preserved in perfect accuracy for as long as humanity is alive to keep them. Images to remind us where we've been, and perhaps to keep us from going there ever again.
Now why do I shoot film? The answer is pretty straightforward. We're talking about digital vs analog photography. The definition of analog is something that can be interpreted by a human directly. In the case of photography, we have film negatives. Digital photography requires a computer and software to convert the images from digital to analog. So I shoot film so as to offer up a format for generations in the future to easily view and print as desired, with whatever technology they might have. Even if that technology no longer exists, they can always look at the negative to see the image.
I looked at my pic "stack" and what I see is that most of the pics I take are of my work (knitting, drawing, crafting) and continuity pics (I used to work as a Script Supervisor) :D so I'd say that I take pics of my work(s) in general :D
I started taking photos using point and shoot film cameras and the results were mostly garbage out of focus and blurry. When I switched to digital in the mid 00s, I was taking photos of nature and I love studying nature and wanted to photograph as much of it as I could find, particularly butterflies and moths which I have been studying since I was a child. I then moved onto photographing landscapes and wild plants.
A few years ago I did a photography project on old buildings as I started to get interested in the history of old buildings and what is being done to preserve them, especially since I once lived in a 250+ year old farm house and have visited a 300+ year old house and learned about the 350+ year old farm house my great grandparents lived in before it was torn down in the 1970 or 80s.
Now I take photos not just of nature, but of landscapes, people and places to preserve a snapshot of what a place looked like at that time. I am a historian and love seeing what places looked like in the past, especially since I started doing a lot of genealogical research into my family history and learned about where my family lived in the past and how the areas looked when they lived there, compared to how they look today.
One of my goals though is not just to take photographs of people and places, but I seek out the small details in a landscape, old building, nature etc... to try and document visually and write about as much detail about a place as it looked at the time I took the photos. What really started me doing that was photographing wild flowers and tiny insects and noticing the amount of detail and colors many of them had, which are easily overlooked due to their small size. Doing this drew me into seeing what other overlooked details are out there which people often miss that I could photograph, write about and preserve for present and future generations to see, so maybe they could appreciate some places and the little details more.
I missed the original posting as well, but my picture folder is dominated by my kids, and what they are doing. After that, are things that I do at work. I love taking pictures of nature, but I don't get a lot of time to do that anymore.
I don't, even if i want to because smartphones have made it too easy(as i always have a camera) but also too much work(as smartphone cameras are a pain to use). When i have a proper camera with me i do it because its fun. Using old digital cameras mostly.
photography was the first artistic medium that i got recognition for being good in. when i was like 13 i took a picture of rubber ducks in my sink for an art project in school and happened to catch a water droplet from the faucet midair. it really isnt that great of a photo since i added a bunch of stupid edits to it in photoshop but for my age i felt good about it since my teacher, my mom and my friends liked it. before i just made poorly drawn doodles so to feel personally artistically accomplished and to get genuine praise for something at that age was cool. my mom has also been a photographer for over 30 years so i was around cameras and stuff as a kid so it was a convenient hobby to get into since a lot of the tools were easier to get my hands on. i got a sony a100 and a couple lenses when i was 15 and through my first few years of constantly shooting and editing photography became the main thing that i really took pride in my craftsmanship of.
hey man, thanks for featuring my tweet. What an honor. lol
Appreciate your response! This actually inspired me to focus on more than exclusively the act of capturing physical evidence of a memory, and rather allowing my framing to put emphasis on the other details of what's around whatever it is I'd like to take a picture of. I think concentration on more detail leads to a stronger connection not only to the picture, but to the memory itself, so I think I'll give more effort towards not treating a camera like a Pokeball. Great video!
I mean, treating a camera like a Pokeball is basically how photography got started. Just science and record-keeping. Like I said, all personal reasons are valid when it comes to photography - but I'm glad you got something from the video! Happy shooting!
Awww man, I missed a chance to be a part of the creative process involving one of my favorite TH-cam channels!
I enjoy capturing the moment in time as it relates to my subject. Hoping to preserve that fleeting instant, and perhaps hoping to reach out across the distance of time to whoever the viewer might be. Seeing and relating an interesting view or angle, looking at something askew, taking both the ordinary and extraordinary and freezing them in silver.
#thedecisivemoment
Watching this got me to dig around for my first digital camera, a Fujifilm FinePix A101. Having that camera turned me into the family documentarian back in 2003, impulsively taking pictures wherever I went. After that I was part of the Lego building scene on Flickr, which surprisingly is what helped me improve my technique. Then after that taking pictures at anime cons was really a given when you and all of your friends cosplay. Simple as it sounds, I shot photos for the fun of it.
Unfortunately, as an adult I had a dismal years-long tenure with the Carolinas' very own Portrait Innovations as a photographer/manager, and it killed the fun of photography for me. It's been years since and I honestly haven't yet gotten that sense of fun back. But seeing this video really made me remember some of what I felt back then, holding a camera. It got me to look back at my first camera, my old pictures, and smile.
Thank you for that.
Shooting just for the joy in the act is a powerful thing. Your comment means a lot to me, and I wish you all the best!
Dave twig plant leaf here, I’m out there :). I never even considered how that answer might end up in a video, but I appreciate it. Thank you for taking the time to share this subject and your thoughts.
You’re absolutely right, the medium doesn’t really matter. It’s hard to keep nuance in tweets, but I mostly meant that I lost the creative energy along the way, and am hoping to find that again someday. I used to see photos everywhere I looked and I had a stronger desire to capture those moments -which is why I always brought a camera along too- but it’s not always easy to keep that desire it seems. I sometimes still get a tiny bit of that, which is why I’m grateful phone cameras are as good as they are.
I’ve been thinking lately of finding a way to revisit photos I’ve taken over the years, maybe share them somewhere, one at a time. It might be nicer than to have them just sit there in an archived folder. Mundane as the subjects might be, maybe someone out there couple enjoy the snippets of life from another part of the world, too.
Anyway, thank you again. It’s always interesting to hear your thoughts. Cheers!
Dave twig plant leaf! So happy you stopped by! Keeping the creative energy is one thing I constantly struggle with, so you're not alone in that.
This is just my two cents, but I think you should absolutely revisit stuff from your yester years even if it's for nobody but yourself. Whenever I look back at older stuff I shot, I always gain a new appreciation for either where/who I was then or where/who I am now. Sometimes it helps me get a tiny spark back, too. Cheers!
I never was too much into photography until around 2003-ish when I got my first digital camera; an HP Photosmart 735. I'd just snap whatever for a long time until I discovered the macro mode was pretty good on it. Got into takng pictures of plants, flowers, insects, etc... I still use it to take pictures of album covers for my vinyl blog.
For me it is capturing things that catch my interest out hiking. Photography helps motivate me to go out and see things instead of sitting around all day. I've made the switch from digital to film and find that much more enjoyable too even if I'm lugging around massive Nikon film cameras with me.
Thanks for sharing my comment about photos and creating memories! I agree that act of taking photos cements that moment a little more securely, it also makes it easier to slip back and remember the details of the moment as it was occurring. Even mundane photos have a little more shine to them, because you took that moment to stop and take the photo, it can show how your interests or environment changes over time, or even something simple like the length or style of your hair.
Thanks for the great video and the opportunity to comment!