How long have you been doing photography for? (dated 20/02/11)

[Doug]

Wow, I'm surprised to be among the plurality of respondents... I got really interested in photography in 1963, starting with a Regula 35mm.

[zx9]

I would have been eleven or twelve, my Father started using a FED about this time and I was fascinated with how it worked. He bought me a Yashica 35ME (fixed lens, zone focus and programme exposure I still have that camera all these years later) that was the start of the slippery slope! A couple of years later I was given Praktica SLR and started to sell all my other possessions to buy a 35mm lens and equip a dark room.
In the 90's things kind of got in the way and it was cleaning and testing my long neglected equipment for sale on ebay that I suddenly realised that I had missed (photographically) the early years of starting a family. Since then I have caught the bug again, other hobbies have taken a back seat.

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Looks like a lot of us started as kids because our fathers had good cameras they taught us to use.

[Keith]

About seven years ago I had some debilitating health problems which cost me my business and necessitated a change of lifestyle. My life had been my business so after mooching about feeling sorry for myself for a year or two I figured I needed another passion ... and photography was it.

[Gabriel M.A.]

I took my first photo at 4 years-old. But I'm not counting my time as "doing photography" since then! I guess I wouldn't count my time as a writer since 1st grade, or computer programmer since I wrote my first program at 12 years-old, either...

Hard one to answer. ::scratches head::

[ricnak]

Dad influence here too.

He reckoned there were two types of people in the world. Ones who belonged in front of camera and ones who belonged behind it. He taught me how to be behind one. Wonder what he was really trying to say????

In 1981 I bought myself a canon ae-1 and last year I discovered RF's.

[David Murphy]

Originally Posted by Pickett Wilson

51 years. I became obsessed with photography at 10 years old and never got over it. At 10, I was given, by a family friend, an old, even then, Speed Graphic. We set up a darkroom in a garage closet. And the rest is...well, history (man, I'm old).

Yup obsession at about age 8 and forward at different times in my life. It started with plastic Diana-like cameras, moved to crude darkroom efforts, Super-8, better darkroom work/SLR ownership (facilitated by having more $$ as a teen with a job), then 16mm film crew (real) work, etc. to where I am today: obsessed with rare and/or fine classic cameras, esp. 35mm rangefinders. My only regret, and it's minor, is that I didn't hang tight with cine when I was young and become a cinema-photographer!

[David Murphy]

Originally Posted by Chriscrawfordphoto

Looks like a lot of us started as kids because our fathers had good cameras they taught us to use.

Exactly. My dad was a newspaper and later television reporter and they all had to know the basics of photography and film back then. He taught me what he knew. He's now 83 and he recently gave me the last camera he owned, a Pentax H3.

[Turtle]

Over a decade. I don't know where it has gone, but much of it is either in my neg files or on the wall. I find it particularly strange when I think I have spent nearly three years shooting one project which I have only just finished.

I too will never get over this. Its so ingrained into how I think, it cannot be undone. Its my way of processing and trying to comprehend life in all its variety. That frustration and energy was always there, only I had no outlet. Now that I do I have to keep bleeding off the madness and the only way to do that is with a 'click.'

[markwatts]

As a teenager in the early 70s when I began to travel further afield. To my regret I only came to rangefinders about 7 years ago.

[rover]

Mid to late 70s... my father was always supportive of any whim my brother and I had. When he bought disc cameras (no, he didn't get us all Leicas), he bought 4, one each for himself and my mom, as well as us kids. We always had photos of family events and vacations. We always had cameras in the house, and I was always interested. First real camera? There was a Yashica fixed lens RF I can't seem to locate, then he bought a couple used Minolta SRTs. Lots of P&Ss along the way.

[rover]

Originally Posted by Chriscrawfordphoto

Looks like a lot of us started as kids because our fathers had good cameras they taught us to use.

I guess the SRTs are good cameras, but before that, the cameras my father got for me were like the cars my brother and I had when we were in high school, an embarrassment of hard core beat up Detroit heavy metal. He had friends who owned garages, so when an old clunker was seized by the garage owner after being abandoned by it's owner, my father was able to get a new free car for us if we needed one. We had some winners!!!

Disc cameras, 110 cameras, after the Yashica I mentioned earlier we were wed to 35mm P&S style. Then came the SRTs.

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Originally Posted by rover

I guess the SRTs are good cameras, but before that, the cameras my father got for me were like the cars my brother and I had when we were in high school, an embarrassment of hard core beat up Detroit heavy metal. He had friends who owned garages, so when an old clunker was seized by the garage owner after being abandoned by it's owner, my father was able to get a new free car for us if we needed one. We had some winners!!!

Disc cameras, 110 cameras, after the Yashica I mentioned earlier we were wed to 35mm P&S style. Then came the SRTs.

LOL @ the cars. Probably a good idea for teen drivers though. I wrecked my first car six months after I got my license. I was pretty lucky on cameras. My dad had an Olympus OM-G (OM-20 outside the USA). It was an entry level SLR, not the best thing Olympus ever made, but it was an SLR that could be used manually and we acquired several Olympus lenses for them that I still use today on my much nicer OM-4T bodies. Both my OM-G and my dad's have died. Mine got broken in the same car accident that claimed my first car, and I wore out my dad's while using it as a backup until we finally got a new camera to replace mine.

I ended up getting my first OM-4T out of Olympus because of that broken OM-G though! After the car accident, my dad sent my OM-G to Olympus for repair. The shutter would sometimes start firing at the top shutter speed, no matter what speed was set. Then it would be normal for a time before doing it again. Olympus tried FOUR TIMES to fix it, even going so far (so they claimed) to replace the shutter, and it still never worked.

Finally, they told my dad that they usually give the customer a new camera after 3 tries at fixing the customer's old one. Problem was, the OM-G was no longer made by the time this all happened. They offered him one of their point-n-shoot models, because by then the only SLR they made was the expensive OM-4T. He said no, we need an SLR. He told them that he had an OM-G and the one he sent for repair was mine and that the two of us had 8 lenses and two OM flashes plus winders. That changed their mind: "Since you're such loyal Olympus customers, we'll give you an OM-4T". I was elated! Had always wanted one but it was too expensive for us to buy back then. I still have that free OM-4T. Olympus kept my broken OM-G, but my dad never bothered getting his repaired and it now sits on a shelf in my apartment as a keepsake of my beginnings in photography.

[E.M]

I started in 1972 at a photography school . First year only black and white ( tri-x ) and a Nikon F2 with a 50 mm . After that I found out I am more a colour shooter .

http://www.etiennemichiels.com

[jesse1dog]

Used my Dad's 120 roll film camera but really liked the 116 that came from my Grandfather's house clearance. Trouble was, it let the light in somewhere, sometimes. Did get a photo of the locomotive 'Princess Alice' in Crewe Works before it went into service. Three weeks later it was involved in the Harrow train disaster and was written off. I've still got the photo and the negative. Camera written off too at some later stage - thrown away!
Was given a Vito B for 21st birthday and using a +10 dioptre lens stuck on the front managed to get photos to illustrate a University essay project. As enlargements two of those photos got into the local Camera Club Exhibition - used ADOX 14 if I remember correctly. The enlarger was on the kitchen table with the light box with negative as high as possible and swung round so that paper was exposed on the floor! Happy times!
And a Leica 1 followed because I wanted a longer focus lens - Elmar 9cm.
Some great photos came using Geveart (?) black and white transparency film - I would use it now if it were still available, but we are talking about 50 years ago, and times have moved on.

jesse

[oftheherd]

Originally Posted by Chriscrawfordphoto

Looks like a lot of us started as kids because our fathers had good cameras they taught us to use.

I mentioned using my father's cameras. Of course as a child, he let me use a box camera for snapping away at the zoo or other things like that. He would let me stand behind him in his closet darkroom. He even let me develop a roll of film. Seemed more trouble than it was worth at about 7-8 years old.

It wasn't until about 7 years after his death that I first got the bug.

[al1966]

I got a polaroid swinger just before my 7th birthday, after I got that hungry beast I spent nearly all my pocket money on film. By nearly all I mean I did not buy comics, nor did I buy sweets and friends would ask if I wanted to see a movie and I would not go most of the time. I got a 35mm camera when I was 13, a rangefinder with a busted meter so I had to learn the educated guess method of exposure. so its 30+ years for me, 38 years to be more precise.

[Sparrow]

Over 40 years, how scary is that?

[Lilserenity]

Actually not all that long, yes I did have a camera when I was younger (10, it was a simple cheap 35mm camera after I was told that a Polaroid was too expensive. Mum was right of course! I seem to think I wanted a cat that year too... haha)

Anyway, I have only really been taking photography with some kind of 'seriousness' since late 2003/early 2004, and only really started pushing hard with it about 5 years ago.

Now I can't imagine my life without it.

[Alberti]

Originally Posted by Doug

Wow, I'm surprised to be among the plurality of respondents... I got really interested in photography in 1963, starting with a Regula 35mm.

And WOW, I'm really surprised I 'm the only one just liking my shiny M8 and previously my equally shiny M2! And bling-ling lenses of course. As to photography, mastering the shot, I'm not sure at all
I started in 1968 at times using my brother's Contaflex/Tessar; later in 1969 he gave me a spare Nikon-F/105mm formerly used for street photography in Toronto. Then as a student in 73 I bought my M2.
I even made a point-source enlarger (point source head) in 1976 to get the real grain and best acutance.
albert

[jwnash1]

I bought my first camera a Pentax Spotmatic w/ Super Takumar 50 1.4 in 1966. Camera is gone but still have the original lens along with many other Taks.

[Roger Hicks]

My paternal grandfather was a keen amateur photographer who was killed on HMS Gloucester off Crete. When his widow and her two children left their house, all his camera gear was left in the attic. I often wonder who found it.

When I expressed an interest in photography in 1966, my father (who has never really been interested in photography) said, "You can't be a real photographer without a darkroom," and bought me one, along with a Pentax SV.

It might have been more interesting to phrase the poll in half-decades, from 'before 1945' then 1945-50, 1950-55, etc., to 'after 2010'.

Cheers,

R.

[le vrai rdu]

i started exactly four years ago

[ChipMcD]

Based on this poll, I'd say that there are lots of geezers like me posting here.

[back alley]

and we need all the geezers to join our geezer group on flickr...over 60 and still shootin'!!!