HaarFager's photostream  

I was born totally colorblind, so because of that I've always looked at everything around me much differently than my family, friends and close acquaintances. When I was 15, my friend and neighbor Dan gave me an old 35mm Kodak 35 rangefinder camera that didn't work. I tinkered around on it and got it operating again and because it was adjustable, it became a perfect camera with which to discover photography. Once I began to see things through a viewfinder, I realized that it was how I had been seeing things all along. With a more compact and focused view, this allowed me to see each thing I looked at in a more focussed way and to appreciate it for the way it was, as well as the inherit beauty it had to offer. I feel that just about everything around me is beautiful, you just have to be able to capture that essence. With my vision the way it is and my passion for photography, that's the method I use to capture the things I shoot.

I thoroughly enjoy taking pictures of just about anything. It's almost like capturing a moment in time that will never happen again. Doesn't that make each photograph special? If that is truly the case, I want to try and make each image I take capture that certain je na sais quoi, that undefinable essence, which makes everything and everyone unique and special.

The equipment I use to do this includes models from the early days of photography, working box cameras, up to and including the latest digital methods for capturing an image. As such is the case, I have used a lot of different types of cameras and films and have even built some cameras that worked in the most basic of ways. I feel that in this way, I have to discover and create the image myself and not let a camera do it for me.

Not a second of my life goes by that I don't have a camera within easy reach.

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