The First Photowalk

This past week I was doing a retrospective pass through my image catalogue.  My photoclub decided to have a “Favorite Photos” night asking people to show sets of pictures that were most meaningful to them.  I decided to look through my yearly galleries over the past 10 years and pick one from each year.  I ended up doing two or three from more recent years. 

Along the way, I realized I didn’t have any from 2011.  This was sort of an important year, it was the year I bought my first mirrorless camera and got back into the art after my 35mm gear had fallen into disrepair several years before.  I had seen the PEN EP-L1 and had been wanting one for a while, but I had waited for its successor to hit the market so that the price would drop when I purchased it.  Yeah, I’m a cheapskate. 

I still have that camera.  I still LOVE that camera.  Light, portable, capable, not attention grabbing.  It was perfect.  Same reason I love the PEN F I shoot with so much now.  I was shooting exclusively jpg back then, I had no idea what raw files were.  The jpgs that came out of that camera popped with color that was AMPED!   I sometimes wonder if I do so much in B&W now because I don’t quite know how to reproduce those colors from raw files in lightroom or that the default jpgs are toned down on my newer cameras.

After noting the lack of 2011 in my yearly galleries, I have started digging into the hard drive to look back at images shot in those days.  Many of these images have never been touched by lightroom, let alone the associated skill set I have developed since then.  Its an interesting journey.  I will have a 2011 gallery before I complete one for 2021.

I do a lot of what I call Photowalks these day.  Part of the purpose is making images, part of the purpose is to get steps and stay healthy.  Usually in an urban setting, mostly contemplative in genre with subject matter that includes architecture, street and random visual musings.  Looking back at the very first files from the very first SD card, those images from March 12, 2011 were the same sort of thing I do today.  Hope I am still doing these in ten years with my PEN F Mark 4.