Monday, April 18, 2005

First Photo Shoot at the Necropolis

This was my first photo shoot with the Toronto Photography Meetup Group The first time in my 53 years I have picked up my cameras as a hobby. I hope you will see improvments in my composition, subject matter and style as the timeline of this blog progresses.
More of my first shoot.

Back in university when I was traveling up in the Arctic as part as my work studies I brought a second hand Pentax SLR. After graduation I started work at a geophysical survey instrument company, see the world young man. I kept the camera for about 7 years and took many trays of slides in exotic off the tourist path, the Arctic, Iran, Russia ... While I was in Brazil as all imported goods at that time had 150% import duties I sold the Pentax for more then I paid for it.The problem with a camera when travelling was and still is that it is a target for thieves, you always have to watch them so for many years I was without a camera.

In 1995 while in Japan to give a speech on medical image processing I brought a Olympus L-10 SLR camera, the automatic type that has a built in 28-110 zoom lense. I used this camera to take typical business tourist pictures in countries in Europe and in Thailand.

Back a about 5 years I took a long beach bum trip to The Big Island of Hawaii. I wanted a compact waterproof camera that I could take every where including under the ocean. I brought a Minolta vectis weathermatic zoom PHS (Push Here Stupid) APS film camera. Great little camera small, lightweight, very rugged, the pictures are only slightly lower resolution then the Olympus. Too bad not many companies nowdays have the equipment to develop the APS film. A doubt the current crop of digital cameras would have stood the heat and acid moisture right next to the lava flow as it entered the ocean. Only the batteries couldn't stand the heat!