On Photography

It would be a stretch, I think, to call me a serious photographer. As with most things I do, I dabble. I nonetheless take some satisfaction in turning out a good-looking photo.

The ideal photo on this site will:

be technically sound

have artistic merit

complement the text

show something of interest

help to tell the story of the day.

There might be a few photos on the site that actually do all of those. There are certainly many that only do one or two. More than a few are nothing more than attempts to be artsy, and occasionally there is a really bad photo that nevertheless shows something important. There is a lot of (hopefully) appealing scenery.

Days of Film

I've never been a gear guy. The equipment I've used has always been relatively inexpensive amateur stuff--some would consider it entry- level. When I was planning my first trip to Scotland, I knew I would need to upgrade from my old manual Fujica ST701. I went with Canon, an EOS-10S, largely because I could get a zoom lens with it that was 28mm at the wide end--most of the standard zooms at the time were 35mm. I also bought a telephoto zoom--a Tamron, I think--that I never used much, and stopped carrying around after a while. I don't even know where it is now. Later I got a cheap wide-angle zoom, a Phoenix 19-35mm, that I was more in love with than it merited. The standard flaws of cheap wide-angle lenses--distortion and light drop-off toward the edges--were really bad with that one. I liked it, anyway.

When I got interested in infrared photography, I bought an EOS-650. (Most cameras at the time had blue filters in them that made them unsuitable for infrared.) Infrared photos are taken with an infrared filter on the lens. It's nearly opaque to the naked eye--you can see the sun through it, but not much else--but allows infrared light, invisible to our eyes, through to the film. The black-and-white results are peculiar, often ghostly, as infrared light reflects in unexpected ways, particularly off grass and foliage. Infrared film is relatively expensive and difficult to handle, and getting a good exposure was often a matter of guesswork. That all changed with the switch to digital photography. Some of the characteristics of infrared film were lost, but that was more than compensated for by the ease of getting a usable image.

I bought film, both infrared (Kodak HIE) and color slide (mostly Kodak Ektachrome 100), from B&H Photo in New York. The slide film could be had for less than $3.00 a roll, bought in bulk. The infrared film was about $10. I would generally buy about thirty rolls of slide film and four or five of the HIE before a trip. B&H now sells Ektachrome for about $20 a roll. Kodak HIE has been long discontinued, but other brands of infrared are still available for about $10. I got the infrared film processed at a local lab, and sent the slides to one of the many mail-order labs that no longer exist.

I've owned two film scanners. The first was a Nikon Coolscan that cost about $2000. When it died, I found another unit that had pretty similar specs, for about a sixth of the price. That one has died, too. I'm glad I don't have to deal with scanners anymore...I was always too impatient to get really good results from a large pile of slides.

The Digital Age

I went digital in 2007--a bit behind the curve, maybe, but we don't all need to be on the cutting edge. After a bit of research, I went with the Fuji HR series, tweener cameras that have all the basic functions of an SLR. One of the drawbacks is a fixed zoom lens, but it's of ample range, and Fuji optics are pretty good. The things that drew me to Fuji, compared to other similar cameras, were a filter ring, and the use of AA batteries. They may not be the most efficient, but they are readily available everywhere, and that fact has saved my bacon once or twice. Later models use a proprietary battery, and the line was discontinued altogether a few years back.

Less Is More

As I write in 2025, I'm seriously considering investing in a decent phone camera. I can't justify paying for an iPhone, but the general technology continues to improve, and carrying the weight of a camera seems unnecessary now. I've already shifted a lot of my photography to my cheap Android phone. An upgrade will solve a lot of problems.

The Big Picture

As noted above, I made a point early on of getting as wide a zoom lens as practical. I wanted photos to replicate the way I see things. Like most humans, I have two eyes, side-by-side, and I have good peripheral vision as well. A wide-angle view just seemed natural to me. I was a little frustrated at first when my subjects just looked small, rather than wide. The answer was to crop down from the usual 4:3 aspect ratio to 2:1, which fit well on my old CRT screen. When I switched to a flat screen, I started cropping to 3:1, and that's become my standard look, designed to fit a screen resolution of 1280 x 768. I'm sure not everyone loves it. I don't understand the vertical phone shot that seems to be the default on social media these days. It works for some things, of course--things I'm not interested in doing--but narrow scenic shots that include huge amounts of sky and ground make no sense to me. I guess it goes with the general addiction to phones. Everything here is meant to be seen on a home desktop computer, and those seem to be on their way out...what do I know, I still buy CDs.

Get Me Rewrite

My go-to editing software for all these years has been Photoshop LE, in various editions. I'm not happy that you can no longer buy a current version, but can only license it for a period of time. I'm hanging on to what I have for as long as I can, and when the time comes, I'll look at other options. But I'm well used to Photoshop.

I struggle with contrast and color saturation...I'm probably a little too fond of a high-contrast look. I absolutely despise the sort of horribly oversaturated landscape photos you see on the internet, that uncritical viewers swoon over, but I have to admit that I veer into that territory now and then, just a bit. The cheap Android phone is particularly prone to garish colors. Photos are not reality, and it's not really rational to expect them to be truly realistic, but I do hope to make them evocative of the feel of a place. Obviously, some do that better than others.

I'm not a professional or an expert. I'm mostly self-taught. I appreciate informed and constructive criticism.

MrTattieHeid1954@gmail.com