It's an ugly truth that only photographers can truly appreciate.
How did I start in photography? The time was October 1999. The place was Oregon, USA. Kodak's bankruptcy was almost 12 years into the future. Film still ruled. Digital cameras existed but were absurdly small in resolution and absurdly high in price.
Like many people I still had a compact 35mm film camera; a Kodak VR35 which is now somewhere in landfill, I think. It had no control over aperture value or time value, and focal length was set by pointing it at something close (so that an icon of a single person appeared in the viewfinder), medium distance (for an icon of two people) or far away (for an icon of a mountain). It had taken some decent happy snaps in the past but the west coast USA trip was its first big test. And by "test" I mean "fail".
Sure, I was not a photographer's bootlace then. But even Cartier-Bresson probably couldn't have gotten that camera to do what I needed it to do. It was quite a few years old by then and I suspect that either the autofocus was near death or the lens had just... gone past it. The result is that not some, but every shot ended up like... this. Which is to say awful. Utterly, utterly awful:
This was a place of great beauty and silence. Of a rich tapestry of colour which appeared this way once, and once only, in the fall of 1999. If I were to go back there today (if I could even find back there today), it would not be the same. It would not be the same if I waited for October. That moment, those leaf patterns, those colours and that light existed only once in history and will never appear again. All that remains of this moment is a grainy, blurry shot which has a vaguely accurate colour representation of what I saw beside a quiet country road all those years ago.
The time was November 1999. The place was a coffee shop in the Mid City Centre in Sydney. The occasion was a catch up with my closest friend after I had returned from my trip. "You need a better camera", she said with some understatement. The Mid City centre was demolished many years ago and she died several years ago now. The photos remain, for what they're worth, which isn't much to anyone who wasn't there when they were taken.
In the next year or so digital cameras became mainstream. I bought my first one (I can't even remember the type now) around 2000/2001. I do remember it having a mighty 1.3 megapixels. I still knew very little about photography. In 2004 I took the plunge; the Canon EOS-300D. With kit lenses, so clearly I was still relatively clueless. But I later took some courses and eventually bought an L series lens; the 24-105 f/4. By 2007 I had started doing weekend trips away regularly and had upgraded to the EOS 40D. The 40D and the 24-105 remained my workhorse combination, with an Olympus E-P1 as the compact backup.
On a trip to Perth in 2013 the 24-105 began to fail. It had already been into the workshop twice in the previous couple of years and a third trip would bring repair costs over the cost of a new lens. The 40D, while still a great camera, was also past its prime in features and pixel count. Had the lens not failed I would probably still be shooting with it with a newer Canon body. As it had, though, it was decision time; get a new lens, or switch over to the pro-am Olympus E-M1. The main reason that I hadn't been shooting as much was the 40D's size. It was just too big to lug around on a daily basis. The E-M1 was not. It was also cheaper. But it had a smaller, higher megapixel sensor which meant more image noise. Nonetheless... that one won out.
Sometimes I shoot to record times and places that will come but once, to capture a piece of history that will never be exactly replicated. Sometimes I shoot to enter competitions, which I have done with an amazing consistency of results. (Zero prizes, zero commendations.) Sometimes I shoot to capture the mood of a place, and sometimes just to fix a memory of a place in my mind. Sometimes I shoot just because I like the way the light hits something. Sometimes I do it well (occasionally really well), and sometimes poorly as indeed is true for most photographers, if they want to be honest about it.
But to shoot, and to keep shooting... that, and that alone is what matters.
Q: "But wait, you haven't told us your name."
A: "Hilts. Just make it Hilts. Or AKMC. Or Alan."
Q: "Where are you based?"
A: "South of Sydney, NSW, Australia."
Q: "Where do you want to be based?"
A: "Back home; Roma, Lazio, Italia."
Q: "What should a photographer always carry?"
A: "Spare batteries, and spare memory cards. You do not want to drive three hours to shoot an event, then find out that you have a dodgy memory card and no backup except for a mobile phone. I shall not tell you how I know this, but I do. Oh, a camera and some lenses also help, but that kinda goes without saying."