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| Photo by George Ponder |
| One of the perks of working for a local newspaper in a college town, is the opportunities to cover college events ranging from sporting events to concerts. I captured this during one of Jimmy Buffet's homecoming concerts. |
First off, let me make it clear this isn't going to be a “film vs. digital” discussion. It's just my reflections on taking photographs through the years and transitioning from film to digital.
My first experience shooting was with a Kodak 110. I was probably 10 years old and took this little camera all over the place. I can remember the square flash cubes that rotated on top. Back then, I felt as if I was shooting for National Geographic or Life with this little camera. In reflection, this may have been one of the worst cameras known to man (no offense to Kodak). How anyone expected quality pictures from such a tiny negative is beyond me. Little did I know what I had started when I snapped my first picture with that little unit.
The experience got me interested in photography , and that's what makesthe little Kodak 110 priceless. I would eventually move to a traditional 35mm camera, the Pentax K1000. I would tinker with it, fully equipped with a 50mm lens for years. I would take countless rolls of snapshots and drop them off at the Kodak booth and miraculously, a few days later, find that my rolls of film had turned into prints. It always seemed odd that these little booths were typically in the middle of a large parking lot, kind of like a photographic island.
When I went off to college, I got involved as a photographer with the university's yearbook and newspaper. I had the opportunity to learn my way around a darkroom and, more importantly, I learned to turn snapshots into pictures.
Film was the only game in town. The 35mm format was the standard, and Kodak Tri-X was popular for newspaper photography. A lot of the pictures in the yearbook were also in black-and-white. I shot some color slides, but I liked shooting black-and-white the best.
B&W photography is a great learning tool for understanding composition. You rely more on your subject with B&W than the vibrant colors. You develop an eye for the framing of the picture, the composition, the angle of view, and the depth of field. I began to subjects through the viewfinder in B&W in shades of gray instead of the colors. It's not as if color photography allows you to throw composition to the wind, but I've seen pictures with vibrant colors make up for so-so composition.
The darkroom was my escape from the world. I would spend hours at a time under the red lamp. We kept the radio in it tuned to classic tunes and I can still hear the grumble of the darkroom door turning as photographers came and went. Years later, I would set up a darkroom at the house, but it wasn't the same.
My skills would improve and about a year later, I was offered a job at the local newspaper as a staff photographer. Over the next three years, I would cover everything from used cars for the advertising department to blue ribbon watermelons at the county fair to Bo Jackson cutting up field during an Auburn football game. My knowledge and skills kept improving. The snapshots once taken with the K1000 started turning into quality, published photographs.
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