Welcome!

Hello and welcome to my little corner of the internet. I've decided to create this site to try to contribute a little to the great information already out there on the internet which has helped me to learn more about one of my favorite things: taking pictures.

I say "taking pictures" rather than "photography" because, for the most part, my interest is in the process more than the end result. That is not to say that I don't care about the end result. Far from it. In fact, the main reason my interest in taking pictures has grown so much in the last 5 years comes from me wanting to take better pictures. One day I was trying to take some pictures of my girl friend's soccer game with my little point and shoot digital camera. I looked at the results and said "This camera can not take the pictures I want". And that was that. The next day I was out at the shops buying my first SLR (DSLR, really... a Canon 400d with a 50mm 1.8 lens).

Since then I've acquired many cameras, flashes, lenses, stands, meters and modifiers... nothing fancy, though. I tend to go for older, cheaper things that require a bit more work (like I said, I love the process). Most of the cameras I have are film cameras; I have a couple of nice old medium format cameras, a small fleet of 35mm slrs,a Holga and an under water point and shoot, among others. I also have a digital SLR, but have moved on from the 400d to something a bit more interesting.

So why the film? Well, there are a lot of reasons. The only reason that has any real world significance to it is cost: film and film cameras are cheap. Where am I going to find a 131 megapixel digital camera for $60? The other reasons are really just personal preference. Like I said, I like the process and film has a lot of process to it; I like loading and unloading the cameras, figuring out exposure, not knowing what's going to come out of the development tank and then the satisfaction of seeing the result I was hoping for (it does happen once in a while). And, finally, I love the grain.

I'll go in to more detail about things another time. This is mostly just a first article to say welcome and get me going. Some of the topics I want to cover are infrared photography, HDR images, fisheye lenses, 3D photography, flash photography, light meters and metering. I also want to talk about some of the different styles and formats of cameras out there, handy gadgets, camera bags and a bunch of other stuff... Pretty much anything that is interesting to me to do with cameras. My goal is to do at least one article a week, probably on the weekend... we'll see how that pans out, though.

Thanks for having a look!
  -Andrew