Back in the '80s I was stopping by my then girlfriend's office to pick her up for lunch. It was a little local beach newspaper that published weekly. As I walked in, I could see the editor, who fit the proverbial "old battleaxe" description to a T, in an argument with the head photographer. (Well, saying "head" photographer is being kind. He was the only photographer, it was just a little local weekly after all.) The argument ended with what would become Trump's famous tagline years later: "You're Fired!"
Sweeping out of her office, her royal majesty demanded of the newsroom "OK, who is going to be my new photographer?"
In the stunned silence of the room, my girlfriend literally reached over and raised my arm and said "He'll do it!" That I neither owned, nor knew how to use a camera was no deterrent to these two women, one of whom I'd thought I trusted up until that point.
It wasn't until much later that I learned to get past the stern exterior and came to truly enjoy my editor. She had enough character for any three normal people you meet.
The following week I found myself employed, and standing in the office of the Photo Editor of the city newspaper, (the real daily paper, not the local weekly) to get the crash course in news photography. As it turns out the city newspaper was owned by the same company that owned most of the local weekly papers and did their print runs during downtime between daily press runs. So training new folks for the weekly locals fell upon the staff at the main newspaper.
Two days later, armed with too much information to fit into my head in such a short time, a Pentax camera that may in fact have been older than I was, and a real feeling of being out of my element, I arrived back at the beach newspaper, ready to make every possible mistake.
A few months later, after shooting hundreds of rolls, hand developing all of my own film as well as that of everyone else that worked there, I'd managed to figure out what was going on for the most part. I read every book I could get my hands on and took a proper photography course to boot.
The technical aspects of developing B&W were easily overcome, at least to the standards of a newspaper. I learned to push and pull film, dodge and burn prints ( I did this far far too much at first due to my stunningly poor knowledge of properly exposing the pictures to begin with).
I enjoyed my stay as a photographer. Racing about town, covering news stories ranging from political campaigns and local Rotary clubs to sporting events and tragic local events. It was a pretty decent way to get to see another side of the world that most folks get to skip over. But it's not something I'd want to do for very long. Taking a lot of pictures can be fun, but driving all over town to take pictures of stuff that was of little personal interest can get old fast.
Later on, I worked at a one hour photo for a few years, and that's where I became tired of pictures. It was a resort island in Florida, Sanibel Island. Surrounded by beauty, tropical weather and relaxed people on vacations, I somehow got burnt out on photography. If I had to look at one more set of vacation photos, badly shot sunsets or poorly lit family photos, I'd be ready to carve out my eyes with a mellon baller.
It wasn't until many years later, when I was married and had things in my life worth appreciating and saving, that I thought about owning a camera again and started wanting to take pictures again. I got a new Nikon D80 digital camera and went wild with taking photos. Family, local landscapes and waterfalls, some local events for fun. Being a professional geek (that's how I often reply when asked what I do for a living, as it's more easily understood than describing my actual job) I have some decent photo editing tools at my disposal, and I became even more interested in the digital darkroom and what I could possibly do for fun, and maybe even a smidgen of profit if I happened to get lucky.
That's when I decided to really try out infrared photography. I'd dabbled and played around with it at various times, but it was prohibitively tedious and difficult to work with, so I'd never been able to get very far with it. Digital cameras changed all of that.
I've taken the steps to acquire an infrared digital camera and what I'll do in the following series of posts is to discuss how it works, what I learn and what I wish I'd known before I started. In short, I hope to write the blog that I wish I could have read when I first started thinking about getting into infrared photography.
Sweeping out of her office, her royal majesty demanded of the newsroom "OK, who is going to be my new photographer?"
In the stunned silence of the room, my girlfriend literally reached over and raised my arm and said "He'll do it!" That I neither owned, nor knew how to use a camera was no deterrent to these two women, one of whom I'd thought I trusted up until that point.
It wasn't until much later that I learned to get past the stern exterior and came to truly enjoy my editor. She had enough character for any three normal people you meet.
The following week I found myself employed, and standing in the office of the Photo Editor of the city newspaper, (the real daily paper, not the local weekly) to get the crash course in news photography. As it turns out the city newspaper was owned by the same company that owned most of the local weekly papers and did their print runs during downtime between daily press runs. So training new folks for the weekly locals fell upon the staff at the main newspaper.
Two days later, armed with too much information to fit into my head in such a short time, a Pentax camera that may in fact have been older than I was, and a real feeling of being out of my element, I arrived back at the beach newspaper, ready to make every possible mistake.
A few months later, after shooting hundreds of rolls, hand developing all of my own film as well as that of everyone else that worked there, I'd managed to figure out what was going on for the most part. I read every book I could get my hands on and took a proper photography course to boot.
The technical aspects of developing B&W were easily overcome, at least to the standards of a newspaper. I learned to push and pull film, dodge and burn prints ( I did this far far too much at first due to my stunningly poor knowledge of properly exposing the pictures to begin with).
I enjoyed my stay as a photographer. Racing about town, covering news stories ranging from political campaigns and local Rotary clubs to sporting events and tragic local events. It was a pretty decent way to get to see another side of the world that most folks get to skip over. But it's not something I'd want to do for very long. Taking a lot of pictures can be fun, but driving all over town to take pictures of stuff that was of little personal interest can get old fast.
Later on, I worked at a one hour photo for a few years, and that's where I became tired of pictures. It was a resort island in Florida, Sanibel Island. Surrounded by beauty, tropical weather and relaxed people on vacations, I somehow got burnt out on photography. If I had to look at one more set of vacation photos, badly shot sunsets or poorly lit family photos, I'd be ready to carve out my eyes with a mellon baller.
It wasn't until many years later, when I was married and had things in my life worth appreciating and saving, that I thought about owning a camera again and started wanting to take pictures again. I got a new Nikon D80 digital camera and went wild with taking photos. Family, local landscapes and waterfalls, some local events for fun. Being a professional geek (that's how I often reply when asked what I do for a living, as it's more easily understood than describing my actual job) I have some decent photo editing tools at my disposal, and I became even more interested in the digital darkroom and what I could possibly do for fun, and maybe even a smidgen of profit if I happened to get lucky.
That's when I decided to really try out infrared photography. I'd dabbled and played around with it at various times, but it was prohibitively tedious and difficult to work with, so I'd never been able to get very far with it. Digital cameras changed all of that.
I've taken the steps to acquire an infrared digital camera and what I'll do in the following series of posts is to discuss how it works, what I learn and what I wish I'd known before I started. In short, I hope to write the blog that I wish I could have read when I first started thinking about getting into infrared photography.
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