There is a lot of pressure when writing your first blog post (ever)! Where do you start? Perhaps with the “hello world” ice breaker? Or maybe reciting my life story from birth to the Dunkies k-cup coffee that I’m currently enjoying? Maybe I’ll just start with the obvious – I LOVE PHOTOGRAPHY!
I can recall exactly when I fell in love with it. It was the summer of 1997, and I was spending a summer abroad taking Physics and Shakespeare classes at Oxford University. What I came back home with was not books, but rather 24 rolls of film. It was the wind-up, one-time-use disposable camera kind – no preview LCD screens, no do-overs, no auto focus, no manual setting – and for all I knew it was going to be a big expensive blurry mess. In those days, you had to develop a roll if you were ever going to see what was on it. It cost around $7 to develop each roll and, needless to say, when the cash register rang in at just under $200 I felt guilty as my mom reached for her wallet.
The pictures, to my delight, had come out pretty well for the high caliber technology used in capturing them! There was one picture in particular that stood out, which has been fading and collecting dust in its 4×6 frame in my childhood bedroom for the past 14 years. Here it is, scanned and uploaded (apologies for the poor quality):
While it was no Ansel Adams, I probably should have started pursuing photography right then and there. After all, I did have a thirst for photography in my genes – my dad loved photography too, and in his 20s and 30s was always taking black and white photos of me when I was a baby and developing them in his own dark room. In fact, when my parents were immigrating to the United States from Ukraine (I was 6 at the time), they brought very little with them, but one thing they did bring was my dad’s Zenit-E SLR camera. While in Italy, en route to Boston, a pickpocket stole my dad’s wallet (which contained our only money for the trip), and my parents had to sell their most valuable possession – the camera – to get to the US.
Well, since this post is already a bit long and since I don’t think anyone aside from my wonderful husband and family will even know that I’ve started this blog, I will pause here for now…
no comments