New Camera

It's been a couple of months since I originally posted in this space. In the interim I bought a new camera, a Fujifilm x100. It's not a rangefinder such as a Leica or Ricoh but it's not an SLR either. Nor is it a typical point and shoot camera. I had been researching street photography and really believe this is the camera that would get me to where I wanted to go with it. It's a nice little camera that takes very good photos. It's quiet and small, making it much easier to tote around town. I was weighing the option between film and digital, and digital won out, though I did consider film highly. Perhaps it was the subtle lie that it costs money and takes more time to use film than digital. With digital you pay much more for the equipment up front. With film, you pay for it as you go. There are more arguments than that to it but that's what it boiled down to it for me.

So, what has happened with my loft goals of real estate photography and interior photography? I got stuck in the rut of talking myself out of trying to sell something to people who may or may not need what I had to offer. What I mean by that is that the prospect of selling to realtors and designers terrified me, namely because I didn't have the skills necessary to make my photos shine and I didn't feel that approaching people with inferior products (photos in this case) was right for me. Now, could I become accomplished in that area? Absolutely. Without question.

But unfortunately I'm impatient. I want things now. I like shortcuts. But as I'm finding out there are no easy shortcuts in photography. Sure there are people who've been where I am but I still need to go out and take the shots. That's true for street photography. That's true for portrait, wedding, real estate, interior, you name it and you still have to put boots on the ground to do it.

Of course I'm making all kinds of excuses for why I'm not actively pursuing photography for the real estate industry. Bottom line is I didn't want to put in the time to get to where I need to go with the hobby in that field.

Taking "candid" though is fun for me. Yes, it's intimidating too because it's borderline "in your face." Just yesterday I realized that one of my best photos I've taken is on display on my Twitter account. Actually, my wife painted a picture of a film photo I took in Morocco in the 1990s, and I loved it so much I used it as my Twitter homepage. The photo was shot from the hip, and afterwards a colleague told me not to do that because it makes me look suspicious. Lesson learned from one photo.