Through the Lens

In an earlier entry this year I mentioned a friend of mine and how we spent many afternoons with our cameras in tow.   In a sense photography has always been a big part of my life and I consider myself somewhat of a hobbyist when it comes to taking pictures. It began when I was in junior high school. I started documenting my life and everything around it with a Kodak Instamatic camera (those of you old enough must remember the drop-in cartridge films and the one-use flash bulbs) and used that all through high school. My interpretation of the world became a sightline through a viewfinder. With my best friend, who also had the same kind of camera, we would go for long walks after school and on weekends framing in our “nature shots” and dreaming about being professional photographers one day. 


In grade 12 my boyfriend at the time generously gave me a fully manual Yashica 35mm camera. It was my constant companion and I can’t count the number of rolls of film I blew off trying to get “just the right shot”. Of course in those days I didn’t have the luxury of instant gratification like we do in today’s digital age, and had to wait sometimes a couple weeks for the film I sent off to be developed only to find out that it had all been overexposed or blurry. By then the opportunity for the shot was long past.  

Regardless, I was soon able to predict with accuracy what would be a good picture. One year I enlarged 12 of my best shots and hand-made a calendar for my father for Christmas. He was speechless – something rare in my father – as he flipped through it . I became the go-to photographer in the family.

Later, shortly out of University and working for a small town newspaper I was able to learn darkroom techniques and would spend my spare time on weekends in the “cave” experimenting with black and white photography. Back in the city after a couple years I  would“borrow” my boyfriend’s pass-code and used the university dark-room whenever I could,( always purchasing my own supplies) but loving the equipment they had available, enlargers and filters and things that could manipulate my images into something as close to an art form as I had ever produced. (Today my old camera gathers dust. The Yashica still sits in its case on a shelf in the house and I can’t remember the last time I purchased a roll of film - do they even still sell film in rolls?). 

But unstoppable time continued to march and in came the age of digital. I reluctantly gave in and purchased a digital camera. A part of me had always envied those with digital cameras –being able to see immediately if the picture was any good, if everyone had their eyes open and was smiling, if the sun wasn’t casting odd shadows on someone’s face…delete and take another! easy-peasy – but an even bigger part of me missed the old days. Sure it was nice to be able to filter your pictures right after taking them or to take hundreds of pictures while on vacation and choose which ones to delete at a later date, but the mystique had disappeared.

I moved on and merged with the masses, recently acquiring an iPhone. I think it is a better camera than most of the ones I used in the past. I have also joined the“cool kids” and opened an Instagram account (lmcase37). One morning a week and a half ago I was on my regular walk to work when I noticed the sky was a brilliant shade or red/orange/pink. I stopped and framed up what I figured would be a nice shot of the sunrise and posted to Instagram. Later that morning I read that CBC had a Manitoba fall photo contest – all I had to do was hashtag my picture and follow them on Instagram. Heck, what could it hurt?

Turns out it didn’t hurt a bit. In fact I won that week’s contest. And it only took me 35 years.