Beginner's Photography part I

In response to several requests and letters I’ve received over the last few months, I intend to finally embark on a much promised beginner's guide to photography. The guide will be based on compact cameras; the kind of camera purchased by people who want to record holidays or special occasions, or places with the minimal of trouble.

I find it hard to imagine life without a compact camera. Today mine sits on the hall cupboard along with my car keys and mobile phone. It goes everywhere with me. I was five years of age when I was given my first compact camera and encouraged to take photographs of holidays or household pets. Photography was part of the family culture. My parents were both good photographers as were my grandparents. Not in a geeky hobbyist way, they used them as everyday tools to record special events, just as one would use a lawn mower or a food blender.


I’m not a great one for eBay and tend to be a great hoarder so I still have all my compact cameras, including the one I was given twenty-five years ago. Although they are inanimate pieces of technology, each has a collection of memories attached to it, making them old friends and I find it very hard to countenance throwing them out.

I assume if you have got this far you have at least a passing interest in photography. If you haven’t I’m not sure I’m the best person to convince you otherwise, as my interest is instinctive as well as inherited. There must be reasons why, but they have long become obscure and lost in the mists of time. As I write I have just pulled out half a dozen photography books from my bookshelf and not one touches on ‘why photography’. It seems the authors hold the answers to be self evident. The paradox is of course that millions of people show no interest in recording their everyday lives – although I suspect the inclusion of cameras in mobile phones is changing that.

If pressured to explain ‘why’ I tend to answer thus. ‘Who’ and ‘what’ we are is the accumulation of a lifetime of experiences and memories. We are in effect what our memories make us. For me photography is about recording, or capturing the moment, as an aide-mémoire to help recall happy, or sometimes not so happy occasions long after the event. It’s amazing how the mind can distort memories and I still find myself surprised when I open old photography albums.

As a family who have always leaned to photography as second nature, I have family photographs going back to 1860. And I find it fascinating see my father in his father right back to my great, great, great grandfather with his stiff, uncomfortable collar and Sunday suit back in 1858. If I may digress it reminds me of the Thomas Hardy poem:

I am the family face;
Flesh perishes, I live on,
Projecting trait and trace
Through time to times anon,
And leaping from place to place
Over oblivion.

I suspect deep down we all want to know who we are and who we carry the chromosomal baton of our genes for. However I digress. Not wanting to get overly prolix I shall constrain myself to one example of why I always carry a pocket or compact camera.

Imagine if you will a French orchard in the height of summer. It has been a long hot day and you have just eaten the evening meal sat out on the patio of your rented gîte. You’ve gone inside to help with the washing up and when you come out you find the love of your life has retired to an impromptu swing slung from an old apple tree. She is swinging backwards and forwards dreamily, eyes half closed. In her hand a wine glass with a trace of lipstick sparkling in the sun. Her flimsy cotton frock is rucked up high on her thighs to catch what cool breeze there is. Her shoes are nowhere in sight and she wiggles her toes as she swings. Behind her the sun is setting, the warm golden rays creating a halo of diffused, contre–jour light around her hair. The quality of light filtering through the apple trees has a dreamy, misty feel to it. It sets the scene perfectly. Here for a fleeting moment the complete tableau epitomises romance in a way you have never imagined before. You have never seen her looking so beautiful. There can be no doubt you are in love……..you have a tightening feeling in your breast……….

……..You could of course rely on fickle memory to capture and hold that image for the next fifty years or as long as you live, or like me you could grab your compact camera…….

In the next instalment we will be looking at the different features of the compact camera along with advice on purchasing one if you haven’t already done so. Although it seems a daunting task, I hope to keep the guide as jargon free as possible.