My Photography Hobby

[barnburner]

Ive been something of a shutterbug since 2003, I started out simple with a Gateway point and shoot, nothing fancy, the next year(2004) I bought a zoom featured Kodak camera, it had 10x zoom. I rocked that thing til the beginning of 2013 and it was showing its age, didnt help that 2 years before it got damaged on a boat ride, the mode select dial got crunchy or something, but the thing still worked for the most part. 2013 saw me buy my first DLSR, it was a super entry Canon T3, a few years before this someone gave me a Canon zoom lens and I was hoping I would have a DSLR one day so this was the chance to use it. Rocked that Canon til last May(2021) when I was able to make payments on a new Nikon D7500 DSLR, otherwise I would have never been able to afford it unless I did the painstaking long saving up for it. Sold my old Canon after I finished making payments on it.

 

My main subject of photography is emergency vehicles, police cars and fire trucks, pretty much anything with flashing lights is what I love to shoot I have amassed photos from at least 500 emergency agencies from across the country, 95% of which I didnt need to leave the state for. Side interests is aviation and trains and critters. While I love the hell out of airliners, I just dont get a chance to photograph them often as I dont live near an airport that I could easily get to. I have a friend that I need to lightly coax into going out of town to hang out outside an airport. We also go railfanning as thats his main hobby and I mostly love to go as it gets me out of town for a day. Last summer we went railfanning and the place we stayed at for most of the day was near the center of the city that I was able to walk to their police station and fire station to get some photos, Took my laptop too for some light photo editing, One thing I love about my D7500 is that I can link it with my phone, download images and then upload them to photo hosting sites if I need to. For the critters part, my cat is my main subject but I have come across other peoples pets, birds and farm aminals.

A dream of mine is to visit japan and photograph their trains and police cars and fire trucks, I love Japanese EMU trains and I want to ride on the Shinkansen. While I am uncomfy with huge crowds, I think I need to do the sardine packed into a subway train thing they do over there.

 

Last year I bought my first full featured cell phone knowing I would have a great phone camera in my pocket because I cant take my DSLR everywhere, went with the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra, This thing has really come in handy for sudden shots when coming across my main interest, I live near my countys justice center and if I am on the bus coming home and see something different, as in a police car that I dont normally get to see, I will jump off the bus and go back and photograph it with my phone. I want to start walking more, I could get a mile and a half in walking from my apartment and around all sides of the justice center with my camera, as a heavy person I hope it counts towards burning the stuffs needed to start losing weight. I might even sometimes do it twice a day.

 

One thing I am hugely uncomfy with is photographing people as the subject, I will sometimes go out of my way to make sure there arent any people close in the background of what I shoot.