So I got myself my first DSLR. Nothing fancy. Just an old 2013-era Canon Rebel off of eBay. I wanted something small and light that had a line-in jack and a good range of lenses with a sensor size that’s decent enough to dedicate to work projects without any extra bells and whistles. I’m happy with what I got. I paired it with a dirt cheap Yongnuo 50mm lens that I used here; I think I’m good to go.
I’ve been keeping a firewall between my photography hobby and what I do at work for the last couple of years; it’s a mix of insecurity and really needing something I can do without monetizing it. Not everything needs to be a “skill set.” Things can just be what they are for what they are.
But in classically Marxian terms, everything becomes its opposite: the firewall that I needed for a time has started to become more of a stumbling block than a sanctuary, limiting my ability to get things done when and how I want them done. So I’m widening the aperture between these two worlds.
I’ve often appreciated the work of self-portraitists from afar, not relating to the desire to turn the lens inside out, but appreciating the conceptual fecundity of limiting oneself so radically to one self. It’s the exact opposite of what excites my photography most: exploration and unfamiliar locations.
Instead, these artists often stay put. You see glimpses of the same reflective surfaces, the same corners of the same rooms, sometimes bathed in golden shafts of sunset, sometimes glowing in the pale light of morning—they find ways to reveal the novel through subtle changes of angle and time.
I like that concept. I just don’t relate to it. I don’t like staying put. I don’t like being seen. I don’t like noticing the passing of time.
This is the first test shot I took with my new camera. The next two are tests of the still frame option when it’s set to video mode. They are what they are. Unplanned and unrehearsed. Portraits of some kind.
“Some perfect stranger / sneaks on tiptoes Steals my shadow / and goes where I go.”
Sometimes we just have to hold still. x
Just a cat caught on camera.
I read that Canon Raw files don’t always look good in Lightroom, so I downloaded DPP 4 to see the difference. Swipe to see two versions of the raw (DPP and LR respectively) and one SOOC jpeg of the same shot.
Make sure to boop her nose.