This thread really got me thinking... and I apologise now for the length of the reply I don't want to bore anyone with my lifes story but bear with me, some of you may find this interesting and there is a point to the story..... It certainly brought back a few memories (good and bad) for me.
My parents divorced when I was quite young and during that time, my mother had been going through some personal issues and was committed to a mental health facility. Despite my father’s best efforts, my younger brother and I had been made wards of the state by the courts and placed in an orphanage where we stayed for about 4 years. Fortunately we had the occasional leave to stay with Dad for Christmas and special occasions.
I remember one time during a stay with my father, going through some boxes of stuff stored in his garage. Dad is an electronics engineer and so he has always had plenty of cool gadgets laying around that any young boy would have a field day with. Anyway on this day I found an old Hanimex Instamatic point & shoot camera. It was one of those that used a film cartridge rather than a normal 35mm roll. My father had an interest in photography and said I could keep it; he showed me how to use it; bought me some film and basically set me on the path, I was about 6 or 7 at the time.
The camera went back to the orphanage with me and writing this reminded me that I still have the photo album from back then so I will dig it out, take photos of some of the old shots and post a couple in an update soon. They’re in pretty bad condition in a 30+ yo cheap sticky backed album so I don’t want to risk taking them out and scanning. That little camera stayed with me for many years and was my start in photography.
But that’s not the end of the story….
My mother and new step-father moved my brother and me away from the town where we were born and so it became very difficult to keep in touch with my father and I only saw him maybe once or twice every couple of years until this very day, almost 30 years later. I grew up in and around south east Queensland and was the typical teen, interested in cars, girls and music. I still managed the odd photo with the Hanimex or my mothers 35mm, mainly of cars that I built or modified. :)
I married at 18 and my first daughter, Crystal, was born when I was 19. My son Owen was born about 3 ½ years later. I was working very hard to support my young family and had little time, or money, for photography so that little Hanimex camera (I still had it) became a plaything for my kids.
After a several years I had an opportunity to buy a second-hand Olympus OM-1 and a selection of Zuico lenses from a friend of mine including a Zuico 400mm telephoto (man I loved that lens). For Olympus purists out there, the OM-1 was and is a classic camera and I loved it; it re-ignited my passion for the art. Unfortunately financial setbacks forced me to sell the whole kit just over a year later. This was the early 90’s and mortgage interest rates hit an all time high of 19.5% in Australia so I hope I can be forgiven for selling the camera to meet my next house payment. :) My wife wasn’t sorry to see it go at the time; she saw it as a way to save money on film processing.
I spent a few years with no camera at all until in 1998; I had an opportunity to go to Europe with the company I was working for at that time. Needless to say I managed to scrape together some money to get a new camera and I bought a Pentax MZ-10 with a Sigma 28-80 macro zoom lens. Possibly not the best camera around, but it was the best I could afford. I picked up the camera on the way to the airport and spent the flight time learning how to use it. I used 8 rolls of film during the 3 week trip through Germany, Italy and Norway, would have been more had it not been for the price of film in Norway, but that’s another story. My work involved a lot of travel around back country parts of Australia and that camera followed me everywhere I went.
Looking back I’m not sure if I didn’t see it coming at the time, or I chose to ignore it but thanks largely to my commitment to work and the amount of travelling I was doing, my marriage was turning sour. I was offered a position with the company to run their operations in New Zealand and moved here in 1999, initially planning to bring the family over a few months later for a fresh start, but by then it was too late and the marriage ended soon after. Crystal was 11, Owen 7 ½. I have tried to keep in touch with them and thanks to mobile phones and email, we do better than my father and I ever managed, but still not enough.
I spent a little time travelling around different parts of NZ and the Pentax was still there recording everything. Toward the end of 2000 I met Karen and something clicked. We became engaged at a place called Dome Hut, near the summit of Mt.Ruapehu. That was January 3rd 2001 and we married September 15th 2001, exactly 12 months to the day from when we first met. Karen and I share many interests, photography being one of them.
A couple of years ago, I bought my first digital camera, a Fuji S7000 which was a great camera and a good introduction to digital photography and got that little fire burning again deep inside. I took it on a family trip to Hawaii in 2005 and shot over 4000 photo’s!!! That camera also went with me everywhere for my work and another business trip to Europe in 2006.
We now have a daughter, Alyssa who is bright as a button, very intelligent and has been the subject of some of my posts on DPS. She was always playing with Karen’s Fuji V10 camera that I gave her so for her 4th birthday last year; I bought Alyssa a Fisher Price digital camera which she absolutely loves. Photo quality is low, similar to that of a mobile phone, but she takes heaps of photos with it and we have fun downloading them onto the computer and printing a few. Sure most are deleteable but there are a quite few that show signs of natural ability.
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kwozzie_nz/2235842128/" title="Mummy by kwozzie_nz, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2369/2235842128_5a39d00a03.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="Mummy" /></a>
Photo of Mummy taken by Alyssa.
Meanwhile back in Australia my daughter Crystal, now 20, had a baby in January 2007 (yes I’m a Grandfather!!) and I managed to go over to Australia in April and spend some time with them. I had just updated to a Sony Alpha A100 D-SLR and of course it travelled with me. I took lots of photos of my grandson Jayden and spent some quality time with my son Owen who turns 17 this year. He stayed with me at my hotel, it was great. During the trip, I took lots of photos around Noosa Heads, where the kids now live and Owen showed real interest and took several shot’s himself using the Aplha. Later in the year Owen bought himself a camera and is getting a lot of use from it, so for Christmas last year, I bought him a great book by Tom Ang “How To Photograph Absolutely Everything” which I highly recommend for all novice photographers. Owen loved it and I have a copy myself.
Over the past year I have been keeping in contact with my father a bit more, we talk on the phone and exchange emails. Dad has gotten back into his photography over the last few years and is slowly going through all the boxes of old slides and scanning them. He has also bought a digital camera, an Olympus (although I’m not certain which model) and we compare notes on technique etc.
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kwozzie_nz/2235799172/" title="Ewen on Trike by kwozzie_nz, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2287/2235799172_d4a0f89506.jpg" width="341" height="500" alt="Ewen on Trike" /></a>
Taken by my father circa 1972? Me on my big red tractor. Scanned from slide but needs restoration
Now to the point of the story. I never knew growing up away from him, but Dad has a real love of architectural and landscape photography. Apart from the one time with the Hanimex camera, he has had virtually no influence in my life, let alone my photography. And yet here I find myself looking for my next landscape, sunrise or sunset. I am a self employed architectural lighting designer and photographing my work has been a great way to improve my architectural photography technique. I love finding that little detail in a building or sculpture that I can use to create a nice shot. It also turns out that our techniques a very similar also. And now Owen has been sharing some of his photos with me and guess what? Yep, he prefers landscapes. He says it gives him an excuse to get out of the house and go hiking through some of the forest areas and amazing beach coastlines around Noosa. It’s been almost 10 years since my first marriage ended and much like my father with me, I have had no input into Owens photography and yet we share similar passions and techniques. How is it that three people who have lead separate lives can share so much in common? It has got to be genetic right?
This year is my father turns 70, me 40 and considering our shared interests in photography; I’m trying to plan a trip for the three of us; Dad, myself and Owen, 3 generations. I’m hoping to arrange a landscape photography safari in and around picturesque Queenstown in New Zealand’s south island. It will cost a bit of money with airfares to New Zealand for Dad and Owen from different parts of Australia but if I can pull it off, it’ll be absolutely brilliant. Owen hasn’t seen his grandfather since he was 6 months old. I can’t think of a better way to bring us together. I also think of the little camera I bought for Alyssa, she treasures it and protects it from her friends, maybe I’ve put her on the path just as my father did all this years ago. We don’t often get second chances in life so this time I’m planning on sticking around to see what may come.