Since I was a child I have had contact with photography. My father supplemented his income by taking photos at baptisms, marriages and first communions, and he himself developed them in a small laboratory that he had set up between the living room and the kitchen.
What I did have a hard time getting my father to lend me some of his cameras, which was understandable since they were his working tools. However, on some occasions he would let me take some pictures in the backyard of the house, so my first pictures were of the orange bush or the corral where the rabbits and chickens were.
I remember that to take those pictures my father would tell me what settings to use, the lens aperture and shutter speed, none of his cameras had built-in light meters and he would measure the spot light with a small handheld light meter.
When I started working the first thing I did was to buy a good camera, at that time I went for the Olimpus OM1, it was a film camera that came with a 50mm lens. I never bought any additional lens for that camera, but the one it came with was enough to take good pictures.
But it was with the advent of digital photography when I became more enthusiastic about photography, the possibility of processing photos on the computer was exciting. My first digital camera was a very simple Sony, it was not professional but it took very good pictures, I would say that its only defect was that it did not allow to take pictures in RAW format, which allows better processing.
After the Sony I bought an Olympus E500 and with it I have taken thousands of photos, it has accompanied me on many trips and has allowed me to immortalize important moments such as the graduations of my children, the birth of my granddaughters and visits from friends and family.
Nowadays I hardly use the Oly, I only use it to take some shots in the backyard, near my house, or to play with some light effects, I find it too heavy to walk with it on the street. Also, I can only focus through the viewfinder, which I find annoying with my latest glasses.
The truth is that I have become accustomed to taking pictures with my cell phone and although my cell phone is a low mid-range one, it fulfills its function of taking timely pictures.
Today I share with you three pictures.
The first one I took of my daughter with the Sony, the girl was about twelve years old and we were on a trip to a farm that my brother had in the central area of Venezuela, in some very beautiful mountains. I like the photo for several reasons, the out of focus background, the back light that illuminates her hair, and my daughter's gaze. It is a photo that I am very fond of. Every time I look at it I notice that I should have left a little more air at the top.
The second photo was one of the first I took with the OLY, it was on a trip I took with my wife, my daughter, and my oldest son's family, to an area of southern Venezuela known as the Gran Sabana. In those days it was raining a lot and it was easy to find small ponds everywhere. I like the composition of the photo, the tree in the foreground, the cloudy sky as protagonist and the reflections of the water, it was one of the first photos where I applied what I was learning about photoshop.
The last photo I took recently in Maracay, is one of the thousands I have taken with my cell phone. It is the kind of pictures I would like to take with the Oly, but for that I would have to spend a fortune buying a wide angle lens like the one in the cell phone, pictures like that I can only take with the phone.
I know I skipped a little bit the rule of the call for entries since it said the best photo, but I wanted to leave testimony of three different styles with which I still enjoy photography.
I am publishing this post motivated by the initiative proposed by my friend @ericvancewalton, Memoir Monday, in the week thirty-three. For more information click on the link..
Thanks for your time.
Images edited in Photoshop.
Logo creado por @themanualbot