--- Title: Photography-ing Again! Subtitle: Reflections on picking back up a hobby I love but had let lapse. Image: https://cdn.chriskrycho.com/file/chriskrycho-com/images/Black%20%26%20White%20thumb.jpg Category: Art Tags: [photography] Date: 2019-11-03 17:25 Summary: > For the past few months, I have been picking back up my long-dormant interest in photography. It feels good to be back at it! --- [Assumed Audience][aa]: people who find photography and/or personal biography interesting. [aa]: https://v4.chriskrycho.com/2018/assumed-audiences.html --- For the past few months, I have been picking back up my long-dormant interest in photography. I started trying to learn how to take good photographs back during college—first with an inexpensive point-and-shoot with a decent built-in zoom lens, then with an inexpensive Canon DSLR that was my college graduation present. I spent a decent amount of time on the hobby over those years, including doing some family and engagement photos for friends. (They were serviceable, not good; but I was learning a ton and it was a lot of fun… and my friends didn’t have to pay for them.) I was just starting to develop a more serious interest in the technical aspects of the art… when we moved to North Carolina and I started seminary. For the next five years, I took essentially zero photos with a camera not attached to my smartphone. It was not that I was no longer interested; it was that I simply could not keep up that hobby *and* everything else I was doing. I was doing a *lot*—[probably too much.][burnout] This summer, though, I found myself wanting to pick it back up in earnest. I was making good use of my phone camera, and I dug out my old DSLR and bought new batteries for it and started taking it with me on a regular basis. I knew the old camera had some serious limitations, but I wanted to see if I enjoyed and was able to make good practice out of shooting with it anyway. No point in buying a new camera if I wasn’t actually enjoying using the old one, if the hobby didn’t stick. It stuck. This time, all the interest in technical aspects came back with a vengeance, so I have spent a not-inconsiderable amount of time wrapping my head around the physics of lenses. The limitations of the lenses I had for the old camera were very apparent every time I tried to take any kind of low-light shot, and its auto-focus performance was, well not bad for an inexpensive DSLR from a decade ago—if you take my meaning. Having gotten a much better handle on the physics involved, though, I initially thought that I might be able to get away with just keeping the old camera and investing in good lenses for it. Unfortunately, as I started poking around, I concluded that I basically *couldn’t* get some of the lenses I would want for it in the long term: wide primes with low 𝑓 numbers. Canon makes lenses in this bucket, but once you account for the [crop factor] of an APS-C camera like my old DSLR, your options for actually wide lenses are pretty limited. A lot of my time over the last few months has gone to reading—a *lot*—about my options in the space. I discovered the [mirrorless] revolution (most of a decade late), along with the dizzying array of lens options for full-frame cameras. Curious about how this worked in practice, I [rented][LR] one of Sony’s [full-frame][crop factor] cameras for our family’s recent trip to North Carolina, and fell in love. (That’s an affiliate link for LensRentals: we both get $25 off a rental if you use it.) My own copy of the camera I had rented came this week, and I may have driven poor Jaimie slightly up the wall with all the pictures I’ve been taking since.[^camera] Once upon a time, I [tried][photoblogging] to include some photos in my blogging. I never got very far with it—in part because of the same lens limitations I ran into once I picked the hobby back up, but also because my old blog flow never really supported it well. (Sorry, 2012-era WordPress, but it’s true.) As I’m getting back into it, I want to find a way to make that flow work. This is yet another requirement for my much-delayed website redesign. I don’t think I’m going to have a solution I’m happy with in place by the time I ship (more on that soon, I hope!), but it’s something I *do* want to get in place before too long. This also has me wishing there were better options for social sharing around photos. Indie blogging of the sort I so value is wonderful, but at the moment it doesn’t lend itself well to *interaction* around items like photography. I have a *lot* of thoughts on things like [Webmention], including how I plan to use it on my upcoming site redesign… but those are for another day. For today: thanks for reading! ![Black & White Coffee, Wake Forest, NC – Sony FE 35mm F1.8 – 𝑓/2.2, ISO 400, ¹⁄₁₂₅s ([see full size][flickr])](https://cdn.chriskrycho.com/file/chriskrycho-com/images/Black%20%26%20White%20thumb.jpg "thumbnail of a photograph of a coffee shop") [burnout]: https://v4.chriskrycho.com/burnout [𝑓 numbers]: https://www.geraldundone.com/aperture-f-stop-myths-debunked-the-importance-of-the-entrance-pupil/ [crop factor]: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/photography/tips-and-solutions/understanding-crop-factor [mirrorless]: https://www.digitaltrends.com/photography/what-is-a-mirrorless-camera/ [LR]: https://share.lensrentals.com/x/tIxLHl "LensRentals" [photoblogging]: https://2012-2013.chriskrycho.com/art/category/photo/ [Webmention]: https://indieweb.org/Webmention [flickr]: https://www.flickr.com/photos/chriskrycho/49009951457/ [^sv]: Flying to Sunnyvale, California—a.k.a. Silicon Valley—for the final of my quarterly trips to LinkedIn’s main office this year. I enjoy these trips, but I will definitely miss my family. [^camera]: If you’re curious: a [Sony α7R IV]. It’s kind of ridiculously pricey… but I expect to get at *least* the next decade of shooting out of it, and the resolution is just bonkers, and the *feel* of the thing is absolutely delightful to me. If I were making a recommendation for an entry into the Sony mirrorless space, I’d point you instead to the [Sony α7 III], which is itself a phenomenal camera, and I almost got it instead. [Sony α7R IV]: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1494679-REG/sony_ilce7rm4_b_alpha_a7r_iv_mirrorless.html [Sony α7 III]: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1394217-REG/sony_ilce_7m3_alpha_a7_iii_mirrorless.html