Maybe they go together, this need to satisfy at least two, if not three, of the strongest senses. Think about it, we, as writers are both visual and auditory, we look at the words on the page/screen, we speak them aloud to understand their flow. Is it so strange that I should find photography arising as a passion again? After all, it is the desire to capture an image that tells a story ... as opposed to having an image in my mind and trying to tell it's story in words. My son is following a passion that I once had: photography.
When I was 19 (and I would love to say that that was not so long ago!) I developed an interest in photography. I went along to night classes, and had my tutor help me to select a good second hand SLR camera.
My problem was I was limited on funds. My office job did not pay me a massive salary, so in the end I had to accept that this would be a nice hobby, but that I could not afford to get really ‘boots and all’ into it.
My son’s avid fascination for photography began when we came back to NZ on holiday (we lived in overseas for four years) and he picked up my husbands Olympus OM10 which had stopped working for my husband years earlier (and was going to cost to much to repair). I like to look upon that day as one that was ‘meant to be’, because the camera worked just fine for my son! There were no faults with it and have not been since then (about 7 years).
As much as I truly love, respect and admire the art and joy of photography, I cannot afford for two of us to delve deeply into this area. I made the decision long ago that if I wanted to be a writer, then that was where my energies and passion needed to be devoted. To truly succeed you need to be obsessed about your art (and I am - about writing).
So, I have supported and encouraged and financed (or rather my husband and I have — though the husband is really a silent partner) my son’s passion for photography. He is in his second year of studies at the Design & Art College here in Christchurch, NZ. His work is, I have to say, really really amazing, but then again I am biased!
I can’t help but feel a twang of envy when I look at his cameras (Nikon F80, D80, Olympus OM10, and all those lovely lenses…), but then I remind myself, that I am supporting him to follow something I could not afford to follow, and that to see his joy and success is enough for me. I am the writer, he is the photographer.
And yet … Photo & Video, a store not far from where we live, have a black Olympus OM10, and…I can’t stop thinking about it. My camera is a Fujica ST605N (old!) and though I have some nice lenses for it (bought second hand), I keep wondering what it would be like to sell all that and just have one camera with one lens and see what I could do. It’s a completely manual camera, one where you develop feel and instinct, rather than point and shoot — as I do with my current small digital which lives in my hand bag. You see how insidious that passion is once it gains a hold on you? It never goes away.
