Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

Photos

Photographs are not like paintings, but they are beautiful in their own right, and they enable a person to connect with the world in a deeper level, as they make everyday living gain a mindful quality.

My love for taking photos probably come from watching my two uncles' intense devotion to their cameras. They both had dark rooms in their houses and they hung their photos to dry. When they were in that room, no one, absolutely no one, was allowed to get in. So much so that, they would lock the door from the inside.

The first real cameras I used were theirs. One was a Leica, the other a Kodak. Both uncles used numerous lenses of different sizes and shaped and tripods. One of them won a serious competition once. In those days, most photos were black and white or sepia, and all my photos were taken by my uncles.

The first camera I had, while I was in third grade, was a class project. It was homemade out of a shoe-box, black-taped all around and with a pinhole at one end, and if you ask me how I used it, I have no idea, but all I can say is that my uncle developed a photo I took of a tree, and it was all blurry. He said, out of his kindness, the blurriness happened because I had real art inside me.

My real first camera came much later, It was a Kodak instamatic, took 126 square photos. I absolutely loved it and used it for a very long time through three decades, although it had fixed focus, fixed aperture, no exposure meter, a flash-holder on top of it, and it used pop-up flashes. I used that camera even when I took my babies' first pictures and the Alps while flying over them. Later I was gifted a 35mm Kodak camera, but that instamatic was/is my only first true love.

Cameras nowadays have spoiled us. Everything about them is automatic, not that I am complaining either. My present camera, is an outdated, seven-megapixel Sony. I've had it for more than ten years, and although I know replacing it with a better version will cost me under a hundred dollars, I don't have the heart to do it. I have that habit of getting attached to things with which I have created memories, as if they are people. Sometimes,I take photos with my phone, but I never liked phone photos.

I love to capture sunsets from the back of our house, full moon, animals, especially birds, my family, and whatever strikes my fancy at the moment. I know my uncles would cringe if they saw me love the instant images without sweating over lenses and dark rooms, but they had professional minds where photography is concerned, and I don't even qualify as an amateur, except for my love for photos.

----------------

Prompt: What kind of camera did you take your first photographs with? What do you love to photograph?