I first took photography seriously in my first year of secondary school: a senior that I admired was a member of the school's photography club, and I was open to new hobbies, so I joined the club too. My dad, always the enthusiast, went into a camera shop and promptly bought me my first camera kit, a Pentax SLR with a 35mm-80mm lens and a no-brand flash. He had no idea what he was buying, and to be honest, I was simply happy enough to be one of those amongst the new members to actually own a SLR camera. I had no idea what to make out of my camera, except that it was a Pentax and very little other people in my club used Pentax cameras.
SLR stands for Single Lens Reflex, and SLRs are those cameras you see with a lens attached in front of it. I learnt that fact, amongst many others, in the years I spent in my secondary school photography club. I was in the club for all four years of my secondary school life, and joined the main committee for three years out of those four. By my fourth year I was the settled at-ease senior, the darkroom in-charge, equally happy working in the dark fiddling with chemicals or outdoors shooting photos with my trusty Pentax SLR. But I never actually took photography seriously at that point. It was, after all, just a club I was in.
Our club was a very good club indeed: we had several teacher-advisors, all very passionate about photography themselves, we hired an outside instructor, who proceeded to teach me, and the others of my cohort, basic photography, intermediate photography, black and white photography, traditional darkroom techniques, studio photography and macro photography. Years later I would find his name in a brochure together with his rather impressive portfolio: I never did think he was such a renowned wedding photographer. Back then, we just thought he was a funny fun instructor.
I remember there was this senior in my club, one year older than me, who was extremely serious about photography. I would see her take her recent photos and actually go to our instructor and ask him for opinions. I'd always thought she was so serious. A bit too serious. As for me, photography was just something that grew on me, and sometimes, in my rolls of film, I would have one or two photos that I would be rather happy about, but I never actually went forward and asked for comments or constructive criticism. I wanted to improve by myself, in my own way, slowly but steadily. That didn't mean I didn't like photography, it just meant I wasn't particularly passionate about it. And no wonder so. I was so involved in dance, and then in my studies, that photography club became like a relaxing session, a place to chill and hang out, and if we go out for shoots, an opportunity to get some sun.
There was a period I grew very interested in photography then though: when our instructor started his course on black and white photography, coupled with traditional darkroom techniques. Our school had one of the best equipped darkrooms amongst the secondary schools: it was spacious, air-conditioned, had a dehumidifier, running water, attached toilet, enlarger, several red bulbs, and the school subsidised all the paper and chemicals we used, so there was never any thought of the cost of developing our photos. I grew so adept at the whole darkroom process that they proceeded to make me the darkroom in-charge in my final year, and I earned my nickname of chemical girl then. Being the neat freak I was, I cleared the darkroom of all the dust and peripherals that gathered over the years, set new rules about cleaning up and using the darkroom, and actually turned our darkroom into a respectable place, instead of a semi-club-room where the club simply stuffed whatever in it.
Out of secondary school, I actually joined my junior college's photography club for a while, but found it far too boring. So for the next two years I continued taking photos, but now my photos were of friends, of events at school and out of school. Gone were the days when I went out with the club to shoot anything and everything. Because my style is of a shoot-whatever-I-find-interesting, it makes sense I'd have to shoot a lot of things just to get one good shot. Because I had no one to go shooting with, neither did I have the time for it, with dance and studies (the two things that always seem to crowd out photography...) taking the main stage in my life, I took less and less photos. I found my Pentax cumbersome to bring around, because it was an odd shape, and was bloody heavy to boot. By the end of my last year in junior college I was seriously contemplating getting a digital camera, simply because I was shooting worse photos, and because I wanted something lighter and easier to transport.
But as a friend of mine once told me, art requires talent and practise. I had minimal talent in photography, only the innate sense of aesthetics, and for the past two years I have had little practise. It was no wonder I found my photos more and more lacking. At this point, my dad also opened up his new venture, a Kodak Express. I was trained together with his new employees as to how to work the machines and operate the shop, and through that avenue, I familiarised myself with the other part of photography: the commercial processing business. I used the dedicated film scanner in the shop to start scanning in the box of films I had accumulated over the four years of photography outings; this process would take all of two whole years to finish. But even then photography was simply a side hobby, playing second fiddle to my first love: dance.
Two things would change the way I treat photography from then on. One, I ended junior college and entered my eight months break before term starts for university. During that period, I worked full-time at my dad's Kodak Express shop. Working full-time, from 10.30 to 7.30, six days a week, was a vastly different experience from the previous stints I had at the shop during the two years it had been opened. Although it was a very stressful working life, since it was a technical as well as service work, it incited my love for photography again. Staring at other people's photographs, and fixing their photographs, makes one more attuned to what is right and what is wrong in photography. On the other hand, when I get to develop and process beautiful photos, I long to take a photo like that. Developing photos for professional photographers was also an eye-opener. There seemed to be a vast amount of photos out there waiting to be taken.
The second thing that changed photography for me was the discovery of a photography buddy in a friend of mine, who would later come and work at the shop with me. He had not been trained formally like I was, but he picked up photography from websites and from experience, and privately, I admired his artistry. He acted very professionally, and he could make taking passport photos with the dinky digital camera at the shop look like he was handling a professional camera at a studio. Like me, he took advantage of the shop's dedicated film scanner to start digitising his old negatives, and I got to see a lot of his work this way. Although technically I was stronger, having had courses, and a longer history of photography, he was in a way, more expert than I was.
He and his other photography buddy were the people that made me look at my old photos with more intent. Although I liked some of my photos and I put them up on my website as a showcase (and even got hosted because of them! *smile*), I never really thought they were good per se. I had shown my friend some of my old black and white photos previously, and somehow he printed them out. When his photography buddy came to visit him at the shop, he showed the photos to his buddy, and I got my first real constructive criticism of my life. I never thought that his buddy would agree with him and claim that the two of them had a long way to go in terms of composition. As far as I knew, I was the one who was the huge closet fan of their photos. Their comments made me think twice about my own photography skills, and their work made me want to improve more.
The advantage of having a photography buddy was that now, I had someone to talk to about cameras and film, and since he was more expert in these areas, I could actually clear up a lot of my doubts and questions. I learnt a lot from him, from camera brands to filters to films to processing to photographs. By fluke, my old Pentax locked up during one of the photoshoots that our friends organised, and I borrowed his other camera, a manual Minolta with a fast f1.7 lens. That was the start of a love affair. A love affair with fast lenses, a love affair with black and white film, and ultimately, a love affair with a manual camera. Because my Pentax was actually an entry-level SLR, and there were few lenses available for the body, my friend encouraged me to buy another camera body whilst I sent my Pentax away for repair. Since his other camera was a Nikon, he advised me to get the same brand, so that we could share lenses.
I loved the look and feel of his Minolta so much I offered to buy it off him many times. But because that was his first camera, and held a lot of significance to him, he wouldn't let it go. So I decided on the next best thing: a fully manual Nikon camera. At the same time, he acquired a very lovely extremely fast lens second-handed for a cheap price: S$200 for a good condition Nikon manual f1.4 50mm fixed lens. Because the lens was manual, I figured it would go well with my intended manual camera. After he had raved to me about the wonderful Nikon fully-manual FM2 camera, I found a second-hand FM2 at a shop going for S$600, together with an unfilled warranty. The FM2 itself was a good find, but with the warranty, it was irresistible. After pondering for a day or two, I bought myself the FM2 with my own money.
I can't believe the wonders a new camera has done to my passion for photography. Previously I was only experimenting for fun, now, with the fully-manual absolutely solid camera in my hands, together with my friend's fast lens (on long-term loan to me), photography has become fun. I'm still practising, and my manual focusing is a bit off sometimes, considering the years I depended on the autofocus on my Pentax, but this new camera has gotten me hooked onto photos. I had previously given up on colour negative film, and was going to focus wholly on slide and black and white film, but the fast lens makes colour film look lovely. I can't imagine the wonders it would do on slide film. My first roll of black and white film is due out soon; I can't wait to see the photos then.
In the end, it's quite ironic that I no longer have an urge to buy a digital camera. Almost all of the members of my current photography club in university have switched to digital cameras, sometimes I feel like I'm like the last bastion of film in the club. So whilst everyone is upgrading to digital cameras, I went the other way and bought a totally manual camera. And I wouldn't trade it for the latest DSLR. (Although the idea that I could trade it for the much more expensive DSLR, sell the DSLR, then buy back my FM2 and have enough money to splurge on more accessories still holds... *grin*) I plan on getting myself a hybrid scanner next year, to scan my negatives and slides myself, and then edit with Photoshop, since my dad intends to shut down his Kodak Express shop. All in all, my photography hobby seems to have a bright future ahead of it.
Meanwhile, go ahead and give comments on my photographs! I'd love any constructive criticism I can get my hands on...