Getting Back into Photography

I am dusting off an old hobby this week, and having a lot of fun! I am happy to say that the dusting part of that sentence is purely metaphorical – my old camera has been safely tucked away for the past few years in its comfy camera bag, so it actually looks like.a brand new camera, even though it must be 5 or 6 years old!

A brief history of my photography journey

A long time ago, before children came along, I was very, very into photography. I had ALL the gear, some idea, and it was my first real creative passion as an adult. I took a course in my spare time at a local college to learn about it, starting out with analogue gear and developing film in dark rooms (so cool!), before moving on to digital as the course progressed. I was even a ‘professional photographer’ for a couple of years, shooting weddings and working for some commercial clients capturing their staff portraits, environments or products (I did a whole mix of stuff!).

When I became a mum in 2010, I no longer had the time to dedicate to it, even though I had grand plans of documenting my baby with my big DSLR and lenses, I found it to be incredibly impractical to lug around on top of all the baby stuff that suddenly takes over! So I ended up selling my kit in 2018, when I finally admitted my camera kit was just never getting used. However, I did use some of the money to buy a small mirrorless camera, that still had lots of creative control and functionality over and a above a standard point and shoot, but still lightweight and portable. This was a Fujifilm X-T20. I did use this a fair bit, and got to know it pretty well, but at about the same time, I started to get into my new passion – sketching! So the camera hobby fell by the wayside. I found my iPhone was now my everyday camera, and I was documenting my life in my sketchbook.

Fast forward to 2024, and I am thanking my younger self for buying this camera, because I have dug it out and am determined to get back into my old hobby. I think it will be a really lovely sidekick to my sketching – I can take it out with me, grab some video and some stills, and sketch too. I am loving finding lots of content creators blogging and vlogging about Fuji’s (yes, there are lots of people into photography still despite the rise of smart phones!) and my geek brain is loving getting to know all the settings again and playing around with aperture and shutter speeds. I have also discovered that Fuji make great film simulations in camera, which I don’t think I really knew about when I first got it, so that’s a whole new thing to learn and experiment with!

Photo’s from the week

Anyway, here are a few photo’s from this week, not perfect, but just like my sketching practice, I will embrace the imperfection and enjoy the process of learning and experimenting 🙂