Piles of shaped logs on the beach at Madras, India.
(This is a re-post from August, 2020.)
I do like cameras. In fact, I love them. But, relatively speaking, I don't write about them all that much. I'm told by photo-blogging friends that if I were to write about cameras more often I would have more readers. Many people want to read and learn about the latest and greatest in the camera world because they have bought into the fiction that better cameras would make them better photographers. Unfortunately, that's not the way it works, because photography is not about cameras, but about life. What we do with our cameras if we are truly photographers and not just gadgeteers is record life as we see and experience it.
I may not have as many readers this way, but as I say in the introductory column to your left, I write the blog I would like to read if someone else were writing it.
So I would rather write about
photography itself than about cameras.
Or about life. Or about my life in photography.
Cameras are the key that opened the door to this life, but they are not the life itself. And while they are certainly necessary to do photography, they are not photography itself. Nonetheless, I owe those little tools big time. My cameras have taken me to many places I could never have gone and opened the door to many experiences I would never have had. So I'm grateful.
But when I write, I like to write, not about the cameras, but about the places they have taken me. And about the things they have made it possible for me to see and experience.
Lashing the logs together to make a fishing raft.
Because of my cameras, I was able
to see fishermen come down to the city beach at Madras, India at dawn to lash rough-hewn logs into makeshift boats, launch them through the
surf, and move out to a day's fishing.
Perdue's Mill near Clarkesville, Georgia.
With my cameras I have driven many thousands of miles to create books about the barns of Rock City and the backroads of Georgia.
Although
I lived in Georgia
for 45 years, I did not realize just how much I loved the state until a
stranger looked at my photographs and told me what he saw in them.
After evening chapel at the mission hospital.
Through my camera, I saw the setting sun throw a beam parallel to the ground and against the wall of a rural mission hospital in Nigeria, creating a scene of beauty and mystery.
Woman praying. Underground Church meeting, Moscow.
Because of my cameras I was able to
attend a worship service of the Underground
Church in Moscow. Something few westerners have ever seen.
Dr. Gomez holds an impromptu clinic in the church at Mayalan.
With my camera I watched Dr. Jaime Gomez dispense medicine and the Gospel to the people of a remote village in the mountains of northern Guatemala.
My cameras have given me access to a blessed, privileged life. But the credit does not go to the cameras, nor to me. The credit goes to a loving and supportive wife and to the One whose name appears at the bottom of this page and on every blog I post.
About the tools: Four of the photos in this post were made with Olympus OM film cameras with various lenses and Fujichrome 100D slide film. The praying woman in Moscow was photographed with a Leica M3 camera and 3M640T film, and the picture of Perdue's Mill was made with an Olympus E-M5 digital camera. The film was scanned with a Konica-Minolta Dimage 5400 scanner.
Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/
Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia
are available. The price is $22.95 plus $3.95 shipping. My PayPal
address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943
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Photography and text copyright 2024 David B.Jenkins.
I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.
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