jer1961's photostream  

Here is my photographic history... My first photographic experience was in Grade 3 where I took photos and developed film in Terrace, B.C., in 1969-70. After that, I had occasional access to the family polaroid camera, but I took only a handful of images over several years, though in November 1970, my father visited and I shot off a pile of half-frame images at Ward's Island in Toronto, one of those images are here.

Starting in 1974, I borrowed my mom's old Kodak camera which took 620 film, clicking off perhaps 10 rolls of film, including shots of the CN Tower under construction. For Christmas that year, I received a Kodak Instamatic camera, 110 format. I took hundreds of photos with that camera.

In 1978, I inherited my grandfather's 35mm camera, a Praktika LTL SLR. Virtually all of my early photos posted here - to 1985 - were taken with that camera.

In 1985, I purchased a Nikon FE2 in New York City, and that was the camera I used up to circa 2005.

I more or less stopped using the Nikon in favour of borrowed pocket digital cameras. My 2006 New Orleans photos were taken with one of these cameras. And while I would dust off the Nikon for Christmas and my daughter's birthday, my near-continuous photographic habit which started in 1974 had effectively ended by around 1994.

BUT.... at the end of 2007, I received a Canon PowerShot A720IS and over the span of the next few years, my interest in photography has been reborn. To December 2010, that camera has recorded some 20,000 images until it finally died.

I moved up to one of the better pocket cameras available, the Canon PowerShot S95. As well, I started to take photos here and there with the Hipstamatic app on my iPhone.

In December 2011, I traded in my S95 for the latest of that line of cameras - the Canon PowerShot S100, a fabulous camera that also shoots full HD 1080i video.

I have no particular pretensions to this being "art": I often simply document things, record events, and photograph things which, well, catch my eye. And if what I see catches your eye too, that's cool.

My main "philosophy" is that composition is the key thing to photography, the camera used is beside the point. Obviously, pocket cameras have their limitations, but nothing like the limitations which cameras like the Kodak Instamatic had in the 1970s.

Pocket cameras, especially the S95 and S100, have what for me is an enormous advantage - they can be carried conveniently and inconspicuously on your person and brought out when the moment demands. It's far less clunky than the SLRs I used to have.

This is not to say I dismiss SLRs - I work in television and these cameras are used by us as some of these Canons (and Panasonics) shoot television-quality video as well as fantastic photos (I did a promo late 2011 with Peter Mansbridge which used a Canon 5D) - I hope to someday get one my self.