Before original sin

 Do you remember when you first got your first real digital camera?

Mine was a Sony a37, with a kit lens. In terms of technology, it would feel primitive today, but at the time it felt like entering another world.  I had vacillated for a long time about buying one, putting up with a plethora of smaller cameras, until I persuaded myself (and my wife) that I deserved it. So I went to Jessop's in Rugby high-street, presented my credit card and bought it (how things have changed).

I remember being outside the shop, slipping in the SD card and taking pictures of the local church. Later I got them back and marvelling of the quality (!) and the ability to process them. 

For the next few years, the camera went everywhere with me. My family had to put up with me disappearing to take photos. After a while I felt I could see an image in everything and took photos of all sorts of subjects, but I had no way to judge whether the images were any good.

Later my wife persuaded me to join a photography club, and through internal competition and just seeing other images, I started to form ideas about what I wanted to see in my images and strived to achieve them. In turn (in my mind anyway), my images improved, and in turn, I became more critical of what images I kept.

As I did so, my output dropped. I no longer took images anywhere. Instead, I would make special trips. I would still take holiday photos, but they were for family Facebook pages, not for general consumption. Although I did not take as many images, my success rate improved and they started winning competitions.

However, last year something happened. It is at this point in the year when I review my years work and I look at what to enter in club competitions. To be honest, I struggled to find anything I liked. 

There are a number of reasons for this.

Firstly was opportunity. Basically, I have less time to get out. I did one pure photographic trip last year, and even then I had to postpone once. That is not to say I did not go to some great places. I spent 10 days in Japan, which is a wonderful place for photography, but it was a family trip, and I struggle to combine my photography needs in such times. Coming back, and reviewing the images, I felt I had not taken the opportunities offered.

Even when I take photos, they often lie on my PC for weeks and months, before I got around to processing them. Now, this is not always a bad thing. I sometimes find a gap provides a different view of your images, and you see something else. However, too often I fear looking at my images in case mediocrity stares back.

Photography, for me, is always about improving. Up to now, I had felt that every year my images had improved. Last year, for the 1st time I felt my photos were either no better than the year before, or were just, worse, plain derivative. I am not a photographer who is happy to repeat or copy others, but to often I was chasing past glories, taking the same image in the hope something would click.  My goal is to highlight my own style and niche, and it just felt that everything I did had been done before by me, often better.

This made me think about the excitement of owning a camera for the 1st time. That moment of innocence where you don't know any better. The period before the original sin. How great it would be to recapture it.

Obviously, I cannot forget what I learned. One mistake many make, including me, is to go back to your place of greatest success and try to recreate that moment. You fall in the trap of trying too hard, and end up with an image, no better than the one before, but also cursed with the knowledge of faults in the original image.

Instead, I decided to just take my camera and take photos. Don't worry about competitions, prizes or public affirmation. Take images because it is a fun thing to do, with no expectation of success. Just like I did all those years ago.  

So these images below were just me, my dog, walking down a river and taking images. I am not putting them here to be judged, by me or anyone else, just to show the joy of taking.