defining moment in your life

cliveh · Oct 22, 2014

Can you remember a defining moment

when you realised what you wanted to do in life? I can. When in Bantry in Southern Ireland and I took the picture of Ma Murphys quite late in the day and I squeezed myself against a wall and took the shot at a ¼ second hand held. I thought this is what I want to do for the rest of my life.

frank · Oct 22, 2014

Most definitely! This was a defining moment, not for what I was going to do for work, but concerning my passion or my avocation.

During university days, I had recently found an old camera of my father's, and joined up to use the university darkroom. My girlfriend had just dumped me for an older guy and I was out walking in a blizzard because it matched my mood. I came upon the 2 of them, also walking in the blizzard but with happier/warmer hearts than mine. I took this photo of them. They didn't notice me.

I developed the film and printed this frame in the darkroom, and at that moment realized the power of photography.

Dr Croubie · Oct 22, 2014

I can't remember the exact moment, or even what year it was. But one christmas when I was about 10-12 my parents got me a soldering iron. They very soon after had to buy a new coffee machine, because I'd destroyed it. I've been destroying electronic things ever since.
(sometimes I even design them. but mostly destroy).

Of course there was that one time I do remember when we were camping, and my mum let me take a picture of her using her Spotmatic. I was lucky that she even let me touch it she was so protective of it. We've still got the picture, and that Tak is still sharp as hell (colours aren't so good any more, damn cheap 1980s C41).

snapguy · Oct 22, 2014

gaudy lincoln

When I was 9 or ten years old I walked by a run-down old house with a tiny garage that leaned over to the left and hardly had room for a car in it. Inside the garage -- actually 1/3 of the way out because the garage was too small for the car -- was a gaudy Lincoln of early 1950s variety. The vivid colors and the miles of chrome on the vehicle contrasted with the look of the weatherbeaten garage. As I passed by I said to myself I would like to take a color photograph of that. I never did but I did acquire a Kodak Brownie Reflex camera (127 film) and that got me started. I'm still sore about missing that picture and keep two or three cameras in my car at all times, just in case.

Old-N-Feeble · Oct 22, 2014

Yeah... I remember that moment... or rather a relatively slow realization of what I wanted. It lasted for about nine years. It began at age 13 when i discovered my love of photography... and ended when I let my wife took it away... or rather when I let her take it away.

frank · Oct 22, 2014

Old-N-Feeble said:
Yeah... I remember that moment... or rather a relatively slow realization of what I wanted. It lasted for about nine years. It began at age 13 when i discovered my love of photography... and ended when I let my wife took it away... or rather when I let her take it away.

Am I reading that your love of photography ended?

Old-N-Feeble · Oct 23, 2014

frank said:
Am I reading that your love of photography ended?

I shouldn't have written that... I was drinking. There are many defining moments in our lives.

TheMissingLink · Oct 23, 2014

Old-N-Feeble said:
and ended when I let my wife took it away... or rather when I let her take it away.

ah, now I know where my ex remained!

;-)

Wayne · Oct 23, 2014

I have defining moments all the time, and then they pass and a new one comes along. I'm not sure what this has to do with photography, unless the question is only for people whose defining moments involve photography.

Thomas Bertilsson · Oct 23, 2014

Like Wayne I have little epiphanies that guide me for a while. For example, I often find that when people dear to me pass away is a time of very advanced introspection and a re-evaluation of values in life, of things we appreciate and find important. That often bleeds into photography, or other activities I partake in.
That's how life goes.

With respect to photography I was a late bloomer, and there was no defining moment that caught my attention, no epiphany that made me feel I must be a photographer and a printer. It gradually grew upon me, and I must thank my ex wife for her encouragement to get on with it, at least in the beginning she was very supportive. I built a darkroom in the basement, a tiny one, and I cumulatively realized that I wanted to continue with it.

Copyhat · Oct 23, 2014

frank said:
Most definitely! This was a defining moment, not for what I was going to do for work, but concerning my passion or my avocation.

During university days, I had recently found an old camera of my father's, and joined up to use the university darkroom. My girlfriend had just dumped me for an older guy and I was out walking in a blizzard because it matched my mood. I came upon the 2 of them, also walking in the blizzard but with happier/warmer hearts than mine. I took this photo of them. They didn't notice me.

I developed the film and printed this frame in the darkroom, and at that moment realized the power of photography.

Wow, that photograph made the hair on my arms stand up.

removed account4 · Oct 23, 2014

when i was 16 or 17 and made my first book of photographs ( by hand, not by blurb's hand )

Ghostman · Oct 23, 2014

I was on a beach in Thailand with my brother in the early 90's. We took a large dose of magic mushrooms. We met God, attended the cosmic university, had telepathic conversations and painted the most glorious pictures in the night sky using the stars as paint. This was a defining moment in my life.

baachitraka · Oct 23, 2014

Prolonged emptiness for which I had nothing fill for quite long time is the reason I think that forced me to take something which I never took before. I was reading some ancient text esp., from India but after a while for some reasons I did not continue(lost in translation).

Photography was never the thing I wanted and in-fact I hated people carrying those cameras on the street, but all of a sudden things had changed after I saw few photos in flickr. Until that day I never shot a single roll of film nor even touched any digital camera.

First roll I shot was Delta 3200 and the scans form the lab has attracted me towards the film...still too far from perfect but I enjoy the whole process.

* I value the money a lot, since I know the pain when I use to work in a restaurant to earn for living during college days. So my gear is rather very conservative.

Wayne · Oct 23, 2014

I was born with a huge (Elwood? Saltzman?) enlarger and amber lights in the basement, and Dektol fumes wafting up the stairs.

tron_ · Oct 28, 2014

frank said:
Most definitely! This was a defining moment, not for what I was going to do for work, but concerning my passion or my avocation.

During university days, I had recently found an old camera of my father's, and joined up to use the university darkroom. My girlfriend had just dumped me for an older guy and I was out walking in a blizzard because it matched my mood. I came upon the 2 of them, also walking in the blizzard but with happier/warmer hearts than mine. I took this photo of them. They didn't notice me.

I developed the film and printed this frame in the darkroom, and at that moment realized the power of photography.

Wow, that sent a chill down my spine and made the hair on my neck stand. Will remember this post for a long time.

Vaughn · Oct 28, 2014

No, I tend to move through life and then look back occasionally and think, "Oh, that was what I was doing, and how interesting that it has led me to what I am now." A kind of delayed intelligence, I suppose.

Old-N-Feeble · Oct 28, 2014

I remember one moment in particular. I was fifteen years old and had been heavily into photography for about two years. I'd taken many very decent photos and had them displayed on a wall. My mom invited one of her acquaintances over for coffee and to talk to me about working in her family's photo studio some day. The nice lady pointed to a portrait of my grandfather and commented that she really liked it. She asked, "Other than technical accuracy, do you know what makes this a very fine portrait?".

I could not answer her question. I was completely stymied and somewhat stunned. I thought I was pretty darned good at photography because I knew more (technically) than the professionals I'd spoken to. The thing I'd fallen completely in love with (photography) had suddenly smacked me down and let me know I didn't know as much as I thought I knew. I could see and feel... and I could take the images... I was good at the technical aspects... but I didn't know what made them good. That one question made me think and wonder for a very long time.

That one simple question led me to learn more about the emotional aspects of photography and it still affects everything I do. Until that moment, I never thought it was important to analyze the emotional aspect of anything that's so technical in practice. I think this question affected my photography as much as any other thing before or since. I wish I could thank that fine lady right now but she's long gone.

I wonder how many of us wish we could thank someone for their positive influences in our lives but failed to recognize it at the time and we waited until it was too late.

Thomas Bertilsson · Oct 29, 2014

Old-N-Feeble said:
I wonder how many of us wish we could thank someone for their positive influences in our lives but failed to recognize it at the time and we waited until it was too late.

What a beautiful thought.

You reminded me of when my ex-wife was looking at some of my photographs after I had been photographing for a couple of years. I used 35mm color film, and was into lenses, different films, and so on, but didn't really look at what made most photographs really poor, some of them good, and on rare occasion a very good one, and very seldom a great one. She told me: "You have improved your technical skills, but frankly your photographs are not very interesting". She said it in a non-confrontational manner, in a matter of fact way.

I thought about that a lot and it motivated me to try HARD to improve, so I always felt gratitude towards her for that, and while I DID in fact thank her for it, I don't actually think it registered very clearly because of how she felt about me in general. But, lesson learned. I hope she's happier now, and I remain thankful.

TheFlyingCamera · Oct 29, 2014

My defining moment was when I made my first wet darkroom print. Up to that point, it was all theoretical and speculative - I wasn't even really thinking of photography as being my primary medium. My original goal was to learn just enough to take photos to use as subject matter for painting and drawing. WELL... developing my first roll of film, that was magical enough, even though I made a mess of it. But seeing the print appear in the tray, godawful though it may have been, was my eureka moment. From that point on, I knew that I wanted to do this, and that it would be an end in itself, instead of a means to an end.

Nathan King · Dec 11, 2014

I did not have a defining moment about what I wanted to do in life. In some ways I am still searching. I do, however, remember the defining moment that caused me to switch from digital to completely analog photography. I was at the Art Institute of Chicago and walked up to a rather small print. I had seen it a million times online and always thought it was a bit pointless. The print was absolutely stunning, and the sense of luminance it had almost caused it to appear to glow! What a presence it had for such a small print. Every detail was crystal clear with gentle tones that gracefully gave shape to the subject matter. As I stared at it I told myself, "I MUST learn to do this." The print was Ansel Adams' Still Life, San Francisco.

benjiboy · Dec 11, 2014

The most important "defining Moments " in my life are personal and private, but if we are talking about photography the first time I developed a film and made a print in 1954 was one of them that stands out in my memory, and also the advanced photography course I attended St.Andrew University in Scotland more than 25 years ago where I learned so much and there are many more too many to recall.

blockend · Dec 11, 2014

The defining photographic moment was seeing my father use a Coronet box camera on holiday, when I was three years old. It would be another fourteen years before I got my own camera, but the idea that time could be frozen by a mechanical tool seemed almost uncanny, and never left me.

My mother viewed the family snapshots regularly, and pointed out grandparents, great aunts, uncles and cousins I had never met. Photographs were always treated reverentially, as though the image and the person were the same thing. I took on the mantle of family photographer, though ironically, I own none of the earlier prints taken by others.

sdotkling · Dec 11, 2014

Okay, my turn. I was a starving, not terribly confident photographer doing one of my first commercial jobs, a portrait of a pizza company executive for a press release. I exposed a roll or two of black-and-white film, developed it, and saw that the pictures were very dull...except one. That shot captured a certain something, a sparkle, a certain joie de vivre. I printed it and one of the other shots and showed it to the client. He picked the wrong one. I realized he couldn't tell the difference. I gave up the commercial photographer thing and became an art director instead.

cliveh · Dec 11, 2014

sdotkling said:
Okay, my turn. I was a starving, not terribly confident photographer doing one of my first commercial jobs, a portrait of a pizza company executive for a press release. I exposed a roll or two of black-and-white film, developed it, and saw that the pictures were very dull...except one. That shot captured a certain something, a sparkle, a certain joie de vivre. I printed it and one of the other shots and showed it to the client. He picked the wrong one. I realized he couldn't tell the difference. I gave up the commercial photographer thing and became an art director instead.

What! he missed the Afghan Girl shot? re-present it.

defining moment in your life

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