THROUGH THE LENS: PLEASURE IN PHOTOGRAPHY

I remember buying a camera with my pocket money. It was a prized possession and I had to load it with a roll of film. Once the film was used up, I couldn’t wait to get it developed at the shop around the corner. There was no way I could have a sneak peak of what the photos would look like. Most times they came up average-looking with one or two over or under exposed. But at 13, I was not fussy.

Photography as a hobby has come a long way.

My son Samuel is into photography big time. When we go on family holidays he has an extra backpack where he puts in his wide variety of gadgets and filters and lenses, to be sure, to be sure. Presently I am using my second DSLR and the difference between Samuel and myself is I am afraid to experiment on manual mode for fear that not a single one of the pictures taken manually would turn out the way that I pictured in my head.

I decided that the way to overcome fear is to confront fear itself. So I joined an advanced photography class conducted by Jim Finn at the Killaloe-Ballina Family Resource Centre. Jim is an excellent teacher and he takes the time to answer any question, however trivial it may sound. The class participants are a lovely crowd who freely share what they know.

There is a different kind of feeling when you walk the streets armed with a camera. Almost immediately people mistake me for a tourist. (Having said that, without the camera, people still mistake me for a tourist even though I have been here for a good few years now.) You often meet people who are more interested in your camera than yourself, which is not a bad thing altogether because it becomes a conversation starter. Then you have friends and family who will gladly inform you where you can get the best shots of rivers, rubble and roses. After all the pictures have been taken, you choose the best to print or put them up on social media. That is what I would do anyway but I know of some who would post 111 photos of an event at any one time on facebook with themselves in 110 of them.

The pleasure in photography is waiting for the right shot.

I was up in the Wicklow mountains recently and saw some lovely horses. As Murphy’s law goes, I did not have the zoom lens with me. So I crept up stealthily to get a good view. The horses saw me approaching and did not seem to mind as they were as curious of me as I was of them. Just as I was about to capture a beautiful shot, the twig that I was holding on to, snapped. The horses bolted in fright and any hope of a good picture vanished, not unlike the disappointed fisherman regaling the tale of the whopper that got away.

The pleasure in photography is looking for something different in the mundane. You can look at a tree and see a tree. You can also look at a tree and see the knots and the grooves and wonder how old the tree is. If the tree could talk, it could tell stories of people taking cover or having picnics or arguments under it. The beautiful tunnel-like avenue of intertwined beech trees planted in the 18^th century in Ballymoney, County Antrim has been there long before it became famous in the Game of Thrones and voted number 1 in the must-see list on TripAdvisor Ireland.

The pleasure in photography is in the unexpected, a bonus even. I am talking about photographing a flower at Glenstal Abbey and then out of nowhere a bee lands on it. So I can zoom in on the bee as well, stripes, sting and all. However, we also hear of photographs that have been spoiled by the unexpected appearance of an unintended subject in the camera’s field of view as the picture was taken. Yes, the photo bomb. Some are quite hilarious actually especially animal photobombs.

The pleasure in photography is in the chasing. I’m talking about the actual running after a person or object to get some good shots. I remember in 2014 a giant 25 foot grandmother of a puppet roamed the streets of Limerick as part of the Limerick City of Culture celebrations. She was followed by 27 Lilliputians who were tasked with moving the Giant Granny, her own band of musicians and a massive wheelchair - weighing 5 tonnes. I was so enthralled I could not stay put at one spot but had to walk the whole length of O Connell Street alongside the Giant Granny, so I did not miss anything. In my excitement, I forgot to inform the beloved (who was standing with me on that spot for a minute). He then realised the next minute that I had disappeared. The street is about a mile in length, starting at the Arthurs Quay / Denmark Street junction and ends at the Crescent.

I still have a long way to go in photography but I am learning. Believe me there is such joy in learning something that is evolving each day and the beauty of it is I can never say that I know it all.

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE NEW STRAITS TIMES MALAYSIA ON 9 JULY 2017
https://www.nst.com.my/node/255702