By MICHAEL PERKINS
I'M PRETTY SURE THAT MY FIRST-EVER DIGITAL CAMERA was the product of intense guilt. Allow me to explain...
For a while after my divorce and my move from Columbus, Ohio to Phoenix, Arizona, my ex and I persisted in buying Christmas and birthday gifts for each other, partly to convince ourselves that the break-up was amicable (it mostly was) and partly to delay admitting to ourselves that everything was, indeed, finished (boy, was it). And thus my introduction to digital photography, a puny Olympus Cambodia C-1, rocking an intense 1.3mp of raw power, arrived at my new apartment as a result of that awkward and protracted goodbye process.
At that point, early 2000, I was, like many people raised on film, still trying to decide if this whole digital deal was just a faddish toy, spiking its way into the pop culture stratosphere only to crash to earth with equal speed. I was far from impressed with the results from the camera, which I only occasionally picked up to play with, feeling I was obligated to at least try to like it since it was a guilt gift. The resolution topped out at a mighty 1280 x 960 pixels, rendering a barely acceptable image on a computer screen and absolute garbage for any print larger than a credit card. The Olympus was soon relegated to vacation snaps and candids only, with my "real" cameras doing the heavy lifting for any images that mattered.
But, of course, that changed, dinnit?
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
So ask yourself: what was the first digital image that you shot that was decent enough to share, or point to with any modicum of pride. For me, it was this Grand Canyon quickie, taken almost two years after I got the camera. This was the first inkling I got that, hey, this "dig-it-all" stuff might become something....someday.
Around this time, Chase Jarvis, a photographer who had made his professional bones shooting for accounts like Nike, Pepsi, Volvo and Apple (!), published The Best Camera Is The One That's With You, a then-daring book of nothing but digital photographs shot on a two-MP camera on his phone. I was astounded at the audacity of the project: his results were as grainy and off-color and smudgy as my own....and he didn't seem to mind. The entire point of the book was that you didn't only shoot on days when you happened to pack your serious gear, but that you should free yourself by shooting whatever was in front of you, in the moment, with whatever was handy. It was a revelation/revolution for me as a shooter.
Suddenly I started reading up on the evolving state of digital.....who was switching to it, and why, and how the new medium was making its way into the mainstream. I had always known that stodgy old clubs like Arizona Highways or National Geographic would continue to cling to film as if it were the last copter leaving Saigon, but now I wanted them to justify that stance, to convince me that the old way still deserved to hold sway. My second digital camera, a Sony CyberShot sporting a screaming 5.1MP finally gave me pictures that evinced more smiles than winces, and I felt like a convert to a new religion. The deed was done and could not be undone. I was a digital guy.
In preparing to move westward to California several months ago, I spent far too much time poring over way too many photo files from my twenty-five years in Arizona, and the emotion I am experiencing most often is gratitude. I am grateful for the thousands of Ugly Duckling photos that eventually allowed me to occasionally produce a swan. As with all of the best in photography, you grow your gear after you've grown yourself, eventually hitting the plateau where you can make pictures with your best camera, which is, of course, the one that's with you.
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