My grandfather had converted his garage into a darkroom and worked mostly with medium format. Every now and then he’d let me shake the canisters, and when he bought an early video camera (Sony Betamax), he put my brother and I to work lugging around the equipment. As long as I can remember, photography has had a place in my heart.
I took photography classes in high school, and my teacher insisted that we take the batteries out of our SLRs so we couldn’t use the light meters. Unfortunately, I don’t think any of my lith prints from that period survive, but my interest in understanding the technical process of capturing light has.
I studied journalism in university and was a writer and photographer for the paper, but it wasn’t until I “downgraded” to the fully manual Nikon FM3a in 2004 that I really started to consider becoming a student of photography. There is something about a manual camera with a 50mm prime that allows you to see more clearly. Here are just a few scans that I’ve chosen to share, not because of their technical quality or imaginative scenes, but because they nostalgically remind me of satisfaction I had when I when I used to eagerly go to the shop to pick up my prints.
