My photography journey # 2
Architecture, more Roman details, and my very first bokeh - all shot on Canon EOS 40D in 2008.
In order to be able to write these posts, I am highly dependent on my photo archive, where I can see, when I shot what and with which cameras and lenses. It’s the perfect photo diary, and it has already brought back so many memories, which I had forgotten all about.
However, as I was looking for photos for this post, I realized just how big a project, I have thrown myself into. I have so many micro stories, I can write, as I share my photography journey. I will have to be selective in order not to become boring, but I can see already now, that this is going to be quite a long series. I hope you won’t mind!
In June 2008 I got my first DSLR, a Canon EOS 40D, which came with a standard kit lens, the EF-S 17-85 mm IS USM.
Coming from a Canon Ixus 40 pocket camera this was a huge upgrade, and naturally I was ecstatic about the change in image quality.
I got the camera during a trip back home to Copenhagen, and I immediately took it out with me to capture some Danish architecture. Just as I had promised myself the year before while admiring a series of architectural photos at an exhibition in Florence.
I should mention something right away, and it’s not something, I am proud of, but I really want to share this journey in a true and honest way with the good and the bad, so here goes:
When I got this camera - and for quite a few years to come - I had no idea of how to use it. More importantly I had no interest in learning how to use it, and I was probably also a bit too lazy to try. I just wanted to make photos and edit them.
And so for quite a few years I shot everything in complete auto mode! Not only did I shoot in auto mode, I also shot directly in jpg. No RAW files. (And I was still using iPhoto for editing…)
Can you believe it?
It wasn’t until 2011, when I took my first and only photography class, that I learned about shooting in manual, began to shoot in RAW and switched to Lightroom for editing.
Something important happened that summer in Copenhagen, as I was testing my new camera.
The year before my childhood friend had become a mom as the very first one in our group of friends, and of course I had to make some portraits of her cute son with my new camera.
Back then I didn’t know, but this portrait session would be the first of many with her son (and a few years later also with his sister), and while I had no idea back then, I had just taken my very first steps towards what would eventually become a real job.
Along with architecture and random cityscapes I kept on capturing Roman details. Colors, lines and shapes were still among my favorite subjects - always with a minimalistic approach.
Another thing took root that year. For quite some time I had played around with a small project in my head. I wanted to write my own guide book about Rome sharing all the less famous shops, restaurants, neighborhoods etc. I had started making lists of the places, I would include in the guide, but I hadn’t written anything yet.
In fall 2008 I was approached by a Danish magazine on Facebook, who wanted some information for a travel article about Rome.
I decided to take a chance and instead of providing the information, I suggested that I write that article, and of course I would also deliver the photos. They accepted and offered me a small fee for a series of articles about cool places in Rome and in Florence. It was a dream come true, and it fit perfectly into my goal of one day becoming a guide book author and photographer.
I ended 2008 with a small series of plants, which I liked a lot. As already mentioned I had no idea, what I was doing in terms of camera settings, so by rather pure coincidence I made my first bokeh shots, and I loved them.
They were captured in a big field at the end of the street, where I was living in Rome. It was a quite unusual place with wild and unkept nature, an old ruin and even a small group of sheep. Right next to my home.
It’s another one of my older series, which I still like very much today.
What you see in this post is of course just a small selection of what I captured that first year with my Canon EOS 40D, and I think it’s important to stress, that I am only sharing photos, which have meant something special to me, and which I like. The photos, which you see - and are going to see - in these posts, are and will be some of the best photos, I made during the period, I write about. You can be absolutely certain, that my photo archive also contains lots of really bad photography, which I will not share.
I'm really feeling the minimalist approach! Really nice to share some earlier work and give us an insight on your process.
I never get tired of the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana/EUR building. Such a colosseum baby, but so well executed, despite the era and everything else that went with that, I should add... Nice pics.