I think the camera is my muse.
Usually I write here first then cross-post to pearwood.deviantART.com. This time I did it the other way around. Today is deviantART's fourteenth birthday. The project for the day is to write "My deviantART Story". Here's mine. The original is at http://pearwood.deviantart.com/journal/My-deviantART-Story-473960815
Today's prompt from http://writealm.com/august-prompts/
I signed on with dA on January 6, 2005 I had been following a lot of fantasy artists on Elfwood. When they started moving to deviantART as Elfwood was getting less amateur and more amateurish, I tagged along. dA had the advantage that I, a lowly muggle and not a fantasy artist, could get an account and comment on artists' paintings in person. I uploaded a few of my canoeing photos to show people what I was doing and found to my surprise that I could hold my own.
It took me all of a day or two to figure out that if I was going to spend much time here I really wanted a premium account
I uploaded this one my very first day on deviantART. I took it with a Kodak single-use camera.
"Silk and Lichens", October 2006. dA became my photo class as other photographers took me under their wings, encouraged me, and gave me pointers. The one was shot with a hand-me-down Pentax 105G 35mm point and shoot. A decent little camera.
"Fire in the west", October 2007. I got my first digital camera, a Canon PowerShot SD600. Somewhere about that time I bit the bullet and started using the Gimp for my editing. It had way more power than I knew how to use. It still does.
"Three in the garage", July 2008. I bought a shiny new Canon Rebel XTi, a quite fine DSLR. rakastajatar and themobius talked me into learning to shoot black and white.
"Upper Falls Path", October 2009. I started taking classes from one of the partners at Image City Photography Gallery. That involved a lot of sunrise fieldtrips to Letchworth State Park, one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen.
"Morning light", October 2010. Then it happened. I decided to put my dad's Welta Weltur back in service. What a gem of a camera. I took some classes at Community Darkroom and learned the rudiments of wet printing. This photo is a scanned print from an early morning field trip to Canandaigua Lake.
"Between trains", November 2011. In November 2010 we visited Corky's sister Shirlee. I showed her the Weltur. She gave me her old Yashica-D twin lens reflex (Bruce tells it was actually his old camera she gave me). A year later I took this photo on our way back out to Iowa on the Amtrak to visit them.
"Flowers from m'lady", May 2012. I got a Holga Pinhole Camera. 'Nuff said.
"Early Sunday morning", July 2013. The Yashica-D remained my primary working camera. It went with me pretty much everywhere.
"Long time passing", June 2014. I haven't had the heart to do a lot with the Yashica-D since Shirlee died last March, the pancreatic cancer finally laying her low. I'm sure I'll get back to it, but not quite yet. In the meantime I started shooting with the Argus C3 "Brick", the first 35mm camera to make it big. It has been my main camera this year. It's a splendid little beast. I've done rather well with it.
So there you have it. One photo for each year on dA. Thanks to schelly for the idea.
Happy fourteenth birthday, deviantART! This is one very fine community of artist.
Steve, Premium Member 'till Hell freezes over.
It took me all of a day or two to figure out that if I was going to spend much time here I really wanted a premium account
I uploaded this one my very first day on deviantART. I took it with a Kodak single-use camera.
"Silk and Lichens", October 2006. dA became my photo class as other photographers took me under their wings, encouraged me, and gave me pointers. The one was shot with a hand-me-down Pentax 105G 35mm point and shoot. A decent little camera.
"Fire in the west", October 2007. I got my first digital camera, a Canon PowerShot SD600. Somewhere about that time I bit the bullet and started using the Gimp for my editing. It had way more power than I knew how to use. It still does.
"Three in the garage", July 2008. I bought a shiny new Canon Rebel XTi, a quite fine DSLR. rakastajatar and themobius talked me into learning to shoot black and white.
"Upper Falls Path", October 2009. I started taking classes from one of the partners at Image City Photography Gallery. That involved a lot of sunrise fieldtrips to Letchworth State Park, one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen.
"Morning light", October 2010. Then it happened. I decided to put my dad's Welta Weltur back in service. What a gem of a camera. I took some classes at Community Darkroom and learned the rudiments of wet printing. This photo is a scanned print from an early morning field trip to Canandaigua Lake.
"Between trains", November 2011. In November 2010 we visited Corky's sister Shirlee. I showed her the Weltur. She gave me her old Yashica-D twin lens reflex (Bruce tells it was actually his old camera she gave me). A year later I took this photo on our way back out to Iowa on the Amtrak to visit them.
"Flowers from m'lady", May 2012. I got a Holga Pinhole Camera. 'Nuff said.
"Early Sunday morning", July 2013. The Yashica-D remained my primary working camera. It went with me pretty much everywhere.
"Long time passing", June 2014. I haven't had the heart to do a lot with the Yashica-D since Shirlee died last March, the pancreatic cancer finally laying her low. I'm sure I'll get back to it, but not quite yet. In the meantime I started shooting with the Argus C3 "Brick", the first 35mm camera to make it big. It has been my main camera this year. It's a splendid little beast. I've done rather well with it.
So there you have it. One photo for each year on dA. Thanks to schelly for the idea.
Happy fourteenth birthday, deviantART! This is one very fine community of artist.
Steve, Premium Member 'till Hell freezes over.