The Amazement and Wonder of Photography

Okay I know the above picture is terrible, but its a significant picture for me as it was picture I made of the family pet Prince in the summer of 1973 when I "discovered" photography, I made the picture with a Polaroid Swinger instant print camera with black and white film, that my brother had picked up at a second hand store for a dollar or two.

I have always found photography to be a technological wonder which is in itself amazing, back then there was something about that photograph of mine which captured I felt captured a slice of time which really resonated with me. I first peeled apart the picture and waited 60 second for it to develop and then held it before me in the palm of my hands,and through wow! I thought this picture taking business was really cool, but I also knew that there was far more depth to photography than just making snapshots of the family pet. A couple years down the road after I made that picture, I had a 35mm camera and I had turned a closet of the family home into a small darkroom ( how my folks put up with that I don't know ) and just seeing a print develop before my eyes was in it self was another amazing thing.

I think there is amazement even when using my old fashioned looking view camera which I still love to use to this day, there is something so very simplistic and beautiful about an image I'm about to take when looking at that real life virtual raw image upside down and backwards as composed on the ground glass of my camera.

Jumping ahead thirty-five or more years, I find the wonder and amazement of capturing a "slice of time" with modern digital camera technology unbelievable, I find it inspiring when at the push of a button I can look at the image on back of my digital camera a few moments after making a picture of a beautiful subject before me and saying to myself "Now thats amazing !"