Photography is my passion. There was a time that I practiced it every day for an hour at least. I say “practiced” because, like any skill, the more you practice the better you get. When I worked in the big city, I would spend every lunch break walking the streets taking photos with my compact, all-black, Fujifilm X20.

Man, I loved that little camera - the X20. It was the one that really got me into street photography. Beforehand I just shot photos of my family members and interesting little objects here and there. The X20, especially the black one, was designed to be unobtrusive and low-profile in use. It was absolutely silent as well, so hitting the shutter button wouldn’t alert the subject hence running the scene.

I damaged the X20 in a terrible fall I took on a train platform one day when trying to catch my train before it left. I missed the train, broke my camera and sustained a pretty painful bruise on my elbow, knee and thigh. I remember being more upset about the camera than my bleeding elbow.

Instead of buying a new X10, since it was beyond repair, I went ahead and bought a bunch of film (analogue) rangefinders and really took a deep dive into my street photography using film. Changing to film from digital brought another level of fun that I hadn’t anticipated. Apart from the nostalgia of using the medium of film, the fact that I had to pay for each photo made me more deliberate and intentional with my shots.

Covid & Minimalism

During the global lockdowns, like many people the world over, I had a lot of time to contemplate. I had already been into minimalism anyway, but something about a global threat like covid that makes you re-evaluate life.

I had accumulated a lot of things, material things, that I just wasn’t using. A lot of gadgets I had were just sitting in boxes or on shelves gathering dust. My cameras, of which I had accumulated many, also fell into this category.

I decided to have a clear out. I set up an eBay store and listed as many of the items as sensible and virtually all of them sold. I made sure I had the prices lower than market value in other to attract buyers. I even sold my favourite film camera, which was pretty hard. I had to meditate before listing that one.

I didn’t have to worry about tax since they were all personal items. Besides, I sold everything at a loss anyway, so the government probably owes me money.

I am left now with two cameras. One is the mirrorless camera I use to create content for social media. I am a full-time content creator after all. That camera will also serve as my street photography camera with the appropriate lens attached. The other camera is the one on my iPhone, which has become my daily driver these days.

It’s good to be out again

I have been spending time now exercising and walking around as far away from home as I can get. Parks are my favourite but since I had already explored all the parks in my neighbourhood, I decided to go discover other neighbourhoods’ parks.

I drove to a completely different part of town and found a park on Google Maps. There is a lovely little lake in the middle of it with a good variety of avian wildlife. I took a few snaps with my iPhone with an app with manual controls.

It’s not the same as using a dedicated camera, but the quality of these smartphones sure has improved over time. The resolution I can pull out of my smartphone is higher than that of my dedicated mirrorless camera for example. However, the actual quality of the image still looks better on the mirrorless camera due to the superior lens and image sensor size. There are geek reasons for this that I won’t dive into here.

I am turning this into a regular activity now. I get to kill two birds, pardon the expression, with one stone. I get to practice my photography again, and get some much needed outdoors time. We are in springtime now and summer is ahead of us, so I’m feeling excited and hopeful. I'm back to photography and back to living life to the fullest.

Thanks for your time,

Truly,
DT.