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photography is fun¹

My journey into photography started with a reversal. I had never taken many photos before, so it was a bit peculiar that skimming through Camera Lucida made me do so. Nevertheless, I was extremely bored during spring break a year ago and decided to buy a film camera. Note to self or anyone: Never buy a film camera as your starting camera.

I mean, there were some merits to buying a film camera; I even got it at a discount ($50 for an Olympus OM-4²). One of those merits is hard-headedly trying to understand the settings of a camera like lens, aperture, focus, shutter speed and ISO. The other is reading all the old beautifully designed manuals, trying to figure out how to operate the film camera.

These merits are all offset by the simple fact that you can’t see the results of your photography until you get the film developed, which costs a lot for a college student.

I recently got intrigued with photography again, so I wanted to share some current books and works about photography that will inform my future endeavors into the craft.

books

“theory”

• Lectures on Digital Photography: Comprehensive on the technical and mechanical inner-workings of the camera
• Camera Lucida: Comprehensive on thinking about the meaning of photography.
• Camera, Negative, Print by Ansel Adams is another well known series.

collections³

• The Americans: Recommended by a teacher, was pretty cool.
• Equivalents: Cool as an idea.
• Instagram: Unironically, there are many talented photographers to find here.

1. Sorry if the post feels a bit rushed, I wanted to get it out, but I’m also chronically behind on work. ↩

2. I have no clue if it is fully functioning or not. ↩

3. I like both realist and pictorialist photography ↩