Nostalgia is Powerful
It seems to be a thing of the past now but when we were growing up we would pull out old photo albums when relatives arrived or when we were clearing out the attic. I use to love doing it, Even then as a young boy I was fascinated when I looked back at photos of my parents when they were young. I had only ever taught of my parents as being, parents. the taught that they use to be in nappies or threw tantrums as children just seemed unthinkable to me at that age, but I had proof now, right in front of me in the form of old pictures. We use to sit and listen to stories that were connected to the photos and I loved it. I think this is where my fascination with photography began.
I’m not sure if everyone does this or if it’s just me but when I look back at photographs especially old ones I try and imagine what was the general feeling or mood was like (probably a bit weird). I try and imagine how they would have interacted with each other. I try and get a sense of what it would have been like physically being there from the photograph. how would they interact with me, were they happy or angry and how different were their lives than to our lives now. My Mam tells a good story of when she was a child she remembers electricity coming to the house and her and siblings use to fight over who gets to turn on the magic switch. That story blows my mind, to think how far we have come.
Back to the main point
In recent years I have started taking more pictures and documenting my travels. at one point I bought a waterproof action camera (Olympus Tough 820) and it took some surprisingly decent pictures and videos. over a couple of years, I had travelled to many different countries and taken hundreds of photos and of course, I had backed them all up. I had a copy on my computer and on an external hard drive. then my computer completely failed on me and I lost all my photos on it but not to worry because I have a backup(you can see where this is going). then one faithful day I mistakenly formatted the hard drive. To say I was annoyed was an understatement. I tried recovering the hard drive but to no success. I had uploaded a couple of photos onto Facebook so I didn’t lose them but the rest were lost.
I then decided to take the leap and buy a half-decent DSLR camera. so I bought a Nikon D5600 and I have not looked back since. I love this thing. I am still learning the basics really but I am really enjoying the process. I will post up my progress with it every now and then and add some pictures to my gallery.