Photography tips | Fun Facts about me

Fun Photography Facts

So a little bit of a different entry on the blog this week, this month, I mean this time!

Some Fun Photography Facts about me

1. My eyesight is bad – really bad. Even if I know you, or even worse if you live next door, I can pass you in the street if I don’t have my glasses on. (Of course it might just be too early in the morning to talk 🙂 ). However, I still take a whole lot of landscape photos without my glasses on though. If the blurry shape in the viewfinder looks good, that’s enough for me! It’s more important that the ‘balance’ of the image works than specifics. (more here) And I am left-eye dominant which I believe is rare.
2. I got my first camera at age 6 (I think – it could have been 7). We used to send the old 126 square cartridge format films (12 exposure only!) off to Kodak to get developed to 4″x4″. Kodak wrote to Mum and Dad at one point when they sent the prints back, and said they would like to see some of my images when I got older… I don’t think we ever sent them. And no, I didn’t get a job as a kid with Kodak.
3. I will quite often pick an old RAW image at random to process on a Saturday evening, before calling it quits for the night and getting to bed. Let’s see – I may or may not have had a couple of drinks before that during the evening. It’s always fun on a Sunday morning to find out what I processed – and if it is any good!
4. I find it really (I mean really) difficult to get excited about New Toys. It’s almost like I buy a lens that ‘I need to have’ out of sufferance. Technical, me? I am sure some gardeners get real joy out of the purchase of new spade though… I’m still on the EOD5d Mkiii at the time of writing.
5. Most of the competitions I have won, I have won by complete accident. Either by someone saying in passing ‘we have a competition on, you should enter it’ or me digging around in Google to find something else and stumbling upon a competition. I do feel sorry for those that go out of their way to dream up competitions and promote them.

My Photography Pet Peeve…

I love having landscape photos that I have made, hung on people’s walls in their homes. However, objects I sell are made to a quality – the quality people would expect when they buy photos online from ‘A Pro Photographer’.

Sigh – it doesn’t help when people question my print or other product prices and compare to products from Officeworks and K-Mart… sigh, sigh, sigh… And sadly some people really do make a point of it. Let me think – what percentage profit do those companies make from their blank photo paper? And I should make less as a percentage, or even nothing?

And don’t get me started on the people that ask me to just send them a JPEG so they can print it. It does happen.

A couple more Fun Facts about me

1. I once played in a band that supported Donovan – yes him of ‘Mellow Yellow’ and Hurdy Gurdy Man’ fame. I played guitar badly then, and my playing standard has probably gone backwards since. A little bit more detail on that fact – we opened up on the Friday night, he closed on the Sunday! A small festival in rural England in the eighties…
2. My wife and I never actually emigrated to Australia. We grabbed a one-way ticket on QF2 from Heathrow in 1990 and planned to stay for a year. I wonder why we stayed? The carrot of the sponsored residency, a job, oh and blue skies and sea. The stick of the UK recession, associated no jobs, and the Gulf War coupled with the rumour that call-up papers had been printed! I mean I know a trip to the Gulf would have also featured nice warm weather, plenty of sun, and would have all been expenses paid by Her Majesty, however, it just didn’t seem the same. Life was never meant to be planned

Normal Landscape Photographer service will resume shortly. Whatever that is. Thanks for reading this far. Don’t take your life – or your photography – too seriously.

Andrew Barnes