From seed to love (Part II)

My last post left off during my early teen years when I was introduced to photography and limited my time in nature to short, infrequent trips to my family's vacation home.  I was not good at photography and using a 35mm SLR camera confused the hell out of me.  I give kudos to my dad for trying to get me to understand all the different settings. If I remember correctly, he only had two different lenses.  I knew the longer (zoom/telephoto) lens allowed me to see farther away than the shorter lens, but that's all I could understand about the lenses at that time.  The zoom lens came in handy when I was trying to take pictures of deer, hawks, eagles, otters, muskrats and other wildlife I could find.  Those pictures never turned out well so I stuck to landscape pictures more often than not.


Still learning: 1980s 35mm Nikon

I never got the hang of F-stops, shutter speeds, or film speeds since I didn't have a 35mm camera of my own and only rarely got to use the Nikon.  The majority of the pictures I took were taken with a small point-and-shoot camera, possibly a Kodak, which used 110 film, the old cartridge-style film created by Kodak in 1972.  The photos taken with the 35mm were usually black and white, my preferred format, and the 110 photos were usually color.  The up-side to using the 35mm black and white film is that I was able to develop it myself after I took my photography/graphics class in high school.



Playing with Shadows: 1980s Kodak 110

While in middle school and high school, during the 1980s, I started going on short trips with a few different groups of friends.  The majority of these trips were camping trips and my camera always went with me.  My love of nature started to return to me a little more every time I went on one of these trips.  I was still taking quite a bit of pictures of my friends, but I also began taking more of nature and random other sights.  After these trips I was anxious to get my numerous rolls of film developed.  I saved up my money from chores and my part-time job and impatiently waited several days after dropping my film off before it would be developed.  Back in those days one-hour photo labs weren't cheap and the quality of the developing process was poor, so I opted to send mine out and wait.  By the time I went on a two week trip to Maine and Canada I was using a point-and-shoot camera with 35mm film all the time.  I had given up on learning the settings for the Nikon SLR.

Maine, Summer 1988

Some tall building on the way to Maine, Summer 1988



Cliff Jumping in Maine, Summer 1988

Not long after the trip to Maine and Canada I graduated and left for college.  Once again I put nature and photography on the back burner in exchange for friends and parties.  After college I was distracted by trying to find a job within my career field (Journalism at that time) and I was thinking of finding an apartment and moving out of my parents' home.  A job offer brought me to Minnesota in 1997 and I've been here ever since.  I began to explore nature again, went camping and hiking again, and bought a 35mm SLR of my own; a Canon Rebel. I now live right along the Mississippi River and have access to several state and county parks with many hiking trails to choose from and views of rivers, lakes, forests, and more!  After fighting against the digital age I finally broke down and bought a nice Nikon DSLR and two lenses.  I have a standard lens and a zoom.  My next investment will be a good macro lens for those close-up pictures I can't seem to get with my other lens.

This is how it all got started.  Next up, it's time to go hiking!