reclaiming the fun

My dad used to be an avid photographer. When I was little, he used to spend entire Saturdays locked up in our bathroom, which he had turned into his little darkroom, a refuge of old-school creativity. When he was at work, no one else was allowed to enter, lest his work be ruined by the destructive power of stray light. My sister and I spent many a morning stepping from one foot onto the other fighting the power of too much milk for breakfast. My life is now richer for the many black-and-white memories hanging framed on my walls, but back then his passion wasn't good for family harmony.

When I was in middle school, I got my first camera, a simple and entirely manual viewfinder model, and started attending extracurricular photography classes. Now it was my turn to spend hours in the dark, in a tiny dungeon in the basement of our school, far away from the bathrooms and in no one's way. I have only the faintest memories of mixing solutions, processing film in a cylindrical container with developer sloshing around noisily, and making prints. This last activity entailed quite a bit of artistry. Besides prints of the photos we had taken, we also made greeting cards and reproductions much like one does today on the computer, but with more effort and wet hands. I didn't get hooked and left the photo club after a short while. The camera continued to lead an uneventful life.

In 1996, I went on my first big trip, venturing far from the comfort of Central Europe and the safety of home. With two friends from high-school, I went to Romania which had at that time an unenviable reputation for organized crime and brutal violence. Romanian gangs dominated German red light districts and fought for control in the drug trade. It was all over the news every night. Our parents were close to panic over our plans but we allayed their fears with a brilliant piece of logic. If all the Romanian criminals are in Germany, only the friendly folks are left behind and Romania must be a charming place. Little did we know how accurate this statement was. Romania was brilliant.

Before taking off into the history of Transylvania and the mountains of the Carpathians, I got my dad to get me an SLR. After three weeks in the wild, I returned with good photos (but nearly without my camera – having left it at a restaurant in Tîrgu Mureş for a few hours), but one of my friends shot slides, and his photos were so much better. The colors were more intense and the images more detailed, especially projected onto a ten-foot screen in a darkened room. Another camera faced a long, dull life in a cardboard box.

I unboxed it and brought it back to life when I went to the US where my days were flooded with the new, the curious and the unexpected. I had an obligation to document my daily life and later relate it to friends and family, of which none had ever been to America. As the months and then the years passed, I slowly evolved from tourist and visitor into local, and my habits changed yet again. I made friends who were into photography as well and became more serious in the process. I acquired an old semi-professional SLR and a few lenses, similarly second-hand, and discovered Fuji Velvia. Colors were suddenly my friends.

Late in 2004 I went digital and early last year I finally purchased a DSLR.

What sounds like a natural progression certainly felt like one. I never questioned my motives nor doubted my motivation. I thought I drew comfort from taking pictures, but it might have just been the habit. I shot with little passion and without great results. My images were decent enough to impress most relatives but didn't satisfy my too much.

A few weeks ago, one of my friends from Salt Lake, my closest photography buddy and companion on countless trips, shocked me with the news that he had put his trusty Canon aside. "I used to take pictures", he said nonchalantly in a conversation, and suddenly I couldn’t help a critical evaluation of my hobby.

Honestly, I had got bored and slightly frustrated. I have good equipment and take good pictures but there's something missing. The thrill is gone. I had got into a rut and kept on keeping on because that was the only thing I knew how to do. Putting the camera to my eye, I see the same things over and over again. Historic buildings, exotic markets, ruins in the sunset, Eiffel Towers, Southbank and clouds – the list could go on. Only over the last months did I become aware of what I was missing in my photos. It's blatantly obvious once I saw it, but I've only seen it now. There are no people in my shots. Most of my photos are dead.

I could have stopped at this point, and it wouldn't have been for the worse. It might have even been for the better. Deprived of the documentary might of the camera around my neck, I might have found myself forced to pick up a pencil more often and record the goings-on verbally or as drawings. That it didn't come to this is owed to my joining, a few weeks before what could have easily been a fateful conversation, a photography group where I rediscovered some of the fun that had been conspicuously absent for too long. The current high point of this recent development took place on Saturday when I tasted the kick of street photography for the first time. Since then, I've been trying to find out why I was so massively affected by the experience.

I think it has to do with excitement. Pacing down the sidewalk with camera en garde, simultaneously looking left and right in search of moments worth immortalizing suffused me with the most curious rush. I'm not one to go out and get in people's faces, and yet this is exactly what I found myself doing on Saturday, and I enjoyed it tremendously. In two short hours in the most hideously touristy part of London I witnessed more memorable moments than I normally do in an entire week. Many I captured on my chip. It was as if someone had unblindfolded me, and I could suddenly see.

I came home with three or four shots that might not have ultimate artistic merit on their own but easily stand up to critical evaluation as part of a street photography series. Since then I've been doing some reading and discovered some great clips on YouTube. One video in particular, a vignette on the peculiar work style of Bruce Gilden, was immensely edifying and spoke to me in an uncanny way. The first bit of wisdom hides in only little sentence. "I see in black and white", says the artist, and what he means is that his equipment is never in the way, that is camera is an extension of his eyes, never mind that the film doesn't see colors. Secondly, there is his confidence. This guy behaves as if he owns the streets, and when he takes a picture, he only takes what is his already. He is brash, even brazen. While this is certainly not my attitude, I get his point. If you want to get good shots in the street, you have to be bold, even brave.

Toward the end of the film is a third piece of insight that might just be the most important of all. It's a bit indirect and thus hard to relate properly, but it goes something like that. A friend points out that he only sees interesting characters when he is with Bruce Gilden but never when he's on his own. Gilden is a magnet, he concludes. In reality, Gilden’s focus allows him to see where others walk obliviously. I noticed the same thing this afternoon when I was walking along Kensington High Street in the middle of the afternoon shopping rush. I don’t recall one single interesting person, not one moment I would have wanted to commit to memory. The reason for this stark difference to last Saturday? I wasn’t out with my camera, and I didn't look with the eyes of a photographer.

London is one big playground; it's full of characters. So far, I haven't seen many of them. In Camden Town one can't help it even if one is engaged in a treasure hunt for birthday presents. Southbank is one big stage also. But the rest of the city might seem like any other place. However, with newly discovered open eyes and a trigger-happy finger I should be able to start seeing. I'll dive into the crowds and shoot from all angles. With time, I may build the skills to undertake topical projects, showcasing particular facets of my city. And later that year, when my dad retires and rebuilds his darkroom, maybe I'll get a classic camera and go black-and-white again. The street is grittier, realer, more honest without color.