Day 137

Melissa Gaggiano Photography

I have a camera & am not afraid to use it.

    I am fixated on cameras. Are you? Following are some pictures on my Pinterest board: I have a camera and am not afraid to use it. Click here to see more of my pinterest board.

Excerpts from Pinterest board
"I have a camera & am not afraid to use it"

It's Back

    My camera is back and not a moment too soon. I mean don't get me wrong. I really enjoyed reacquainting myself with the old Ricoh but I did miss how the Canon EOS 1100D felt in my tiny hands.
    To celebrate I took photos of tonight's dinner - BBQ pizza. It Last week I wondered what it would be like to cook a pizza on the BBQ, and Michael thought it sounded like a nice idea. We still have a few kinks to iron out with the cooking time and temperature, but I tell you what... Once you have eaten BBQ pizza, there is no going back. It was truly awwwwwesome.



Image by Melissa Gaggiano

Curtain Call

    Still waiting for my camera to be returned. Hopefully I'll have it back this weekend. In the mean time I have been using my old Ricoh. One thing that has resulted from this switch is that I have learnt economy with taking photos. With an old fashioned camera that uses film I cannot immediately review my photos. So I need to be sure that each shot I take is just as I planned.
    A few months ago my eldest was playing in the curtains and it was a bright summery day. The light hit the thick white lining almost creating a professional studio effect. Naturally I had to grab my camera and start snapping away. This was just one of those photos...

Image by Melissa Gaggiano

What Will I Do

Ack!

The camera has gone away for maintenance.

Whatever will I do?



Image by Melissa Gaggiano



Image by Melissa Gaggiano

Angelina Jolie

    One of my favourite actresses, Angelina Jolie, appeared on the cover of Marie Claire [Australian edition - March]. Despite the trash magazines trash talking this woman, I'd rather believe that she has a big heart and is more interested in helping others and developing her own mind. In fact she has recently written and directed the film In the Land of Blood and Honey, a story set in the 90s during the Serbian Bosnian war.
    Additionally I have found Angelina to be an appealing photography subject. I love how she hams it up for this photoshoot of which Alexei Hay is the photographer. And of course I like that they made it look like she was on the otherside of the camera.

Image by Alexei Hay

Image by Alexei Hay

Image by Alexei Hay

Image by Alexei Hay

Image by Alexei Hay

Image by Alexei Hay

Image by Alexei Hay



Image by Alexei Hay

Image by Alexei Hay

I ♥ Fictional Photographers: Part 2

And now, for a continuation of my theme from the other day - I ♥ Fictional Photographers: Part 1.

Next in my line up of beloved fictional photographers...

Bless her heart! Novalee Nation an abandoned teenager gives birth in a Walmart.
But then finds home and family amongst kind hearted strangers.
She also gets a chance to do something with her passion for photograpy.

Vicki Vale: In Tim Burton's first Batman flick Vicki was a photojournalist.
Gotta love her sense of adventure, intelligence and elegant fashion sense.

Lydia Deetz: a teenage photographer who regards herself as being 'strange and unusual'.
Lydia is mostly ignored by her living parents, caught up in their own pursuits.
However a ghost couple who couldn't have children, act as surrogate parents,
thus providing her with emotional security and spending quality time.

I ♥ Fictional Photographers: Part 1

Who are my favourite picture taking ficitonal characters? Well let's line them up like rockettes...

Veronica Mars: Teenage PI and photography hobbiest.
"Bonus points if you get the Dean wearing a lampshade."

Jimmy Olsen: works at the Daily Planet and probably is
the only person who is nice to Clark Kent.

Prue Halliwell: A few years after discovering she was a natural born witch,
she also turned her career to one of her other natural born talents - photography.

Polly Perkins: A newspaper journalist with fast quips and camera clicks.
She just might get in a few good shots if she remembers to take the lens cover off.

Photographer Me

Life Through a Camera

The first camera I used was a tiny black plastic disposable camera. It was the kind of camera to fit in your back pocket. It had a flip up window which acted as the view finder. The photos I took with this camera were a little fuzzy and grey. I had been on holiday visiting Grandma, I believe. The day was spent in Sydney and it was an overcast day, which would probably explain the dullness of the images. As ordinary as the photos turned out it was still an exciting experience. I loved being able to say that I took those photos. I must have been about eight years old. Maybe, even nine.

My next camera was a more permanent structure and therefore, presence in my life. Grandma let me have her disc camera. This was a flattish camera that used a cartridge film, much like a disc. This camera could take 15 photos. I got a good few years out of this camera. I remember there was a glitch in the machine. Somewhere about shot 8 or 9 would never come out. I learnt to work around this problem by ensuring that I never photographed anything particularly special when I got to that shot.

I did a funny thing when I first received the disc camera. I was so excited to have my own camera. I did a photo shoot for my Ballerina Barbie, and had her posing for the camera. It was such fun pretending to be a professional photographer. Little did I know that camera film has its limitation. I just kept taking photo after photo, after photo. Lord only knows how many photos I took, but it was certainly more than the 15 shots that the film allowed.

In grade nine, high school, I took a photographic elective and decided to save up for a professional camera. Realizing that I would be saving my money for a long time before being able to have such a camera, I settled for a point and shoot so I could keep going with taking photos. It was an unremarkable camera but it did the job until…

One Christmas my parents gave me a camera. I was sixteen. It was a Ricoh KR-5 Super II. It really was super and I got so many years use out of it. In my early twenties I invested in a second hand macro lens. This lens was designed for jewel photography. But I used it for getting close and personal with flowers and insects. It picked up so much detail that actually goes unnoticed by the human eye. At the time I had planned to gather more lenses, but little did I realise that digital photography was taking over. My camera was becoming obsolete and it was therefore pointless chasing those lenses.

My old Ricoh camera.

Ricoh macro lens.

The past few years I had been using economical digital instamatic cameras. It was quick, easy and convenient. But inevitably I was frustrated with failing batteries, dirty, pixelated images and yellow lighting.

Lo and behold the camera fairy hears my frustration. This year for my birthday my Dad gifted to me a digital Canon – an EOS 1100D - the perfect camera for entry level professional photographers. This camera has fantastic functions – it has both manual and automatic features. I have gotten a handle of the basic features, but now the time has come to check out the manual. My day is quite busy, being a mum of two, which can leave little room for personal creative development. But being able to lay my hands on a camera at least fills that space each day.

My current camera - the Canon EOS 1100D.