Sharing

Pretty much every time I take a photo, I feel as though I have to share it. That I can’t take a photo simply for myself.

That wasn’t always the case.

When I first started shooting 35mm film, I expected that I would make a lot of mistakes, from which I’d hopefully learn so that I could take better shots—ones that I could feel were good enough to show people.

When I think of my early experimental shots—ones that I never showed to anybody—I think of some close-up shots of a spinning record, with a focus on the needle touching the vinyl, in the mid-to-late 80s. I had some records that were printed on red, green, white, and clear, gold vinyl, and that made the shots interesting.

But the light that I used was incandescent bulbs, which cast a yellow tint over all the shots, and I didn’t have the knowledge of how to use white balance to correct for it. The composition of the photos was good (not great) but the lighting ruined the overall effect.

I also once set four martini glasses on a snowbank, each filled with water and food colouring: red, blue, yellow, and green. I took several shots, starting with all of the glasses upright, before one-by-one, tipping out a glass and letting the colour run down the pure-white snow.

Those shots also didn’t turn out as well as I wanted. I was so focused on the composition that I didn’t think to compensate for the bright snow by overexposing the shots.

When I got them back, they were all too dark, making the snow look grey.

I suppose, now that we’re in the digital age, that I could scan the negatives and then fix the white balance and exposures to make them look better, but I doubt I ever will. There was a time for those photos, in my mind, and that time is long gone.

A while ago, when I took out my Sony α6700 to try some night shots, I was sort of experimenting again, though it’s been about 40 years since those shots with the records and martini glasses, and I think I’m more comfortable with a camera now. I took photos along Bank Street and at the Bank Street Bridge, placing my camera in manual mode and playing with exposure.

I was so focused on getting shots of the canal, the bridge, and traffic, hopeful that I’d have shots that were worth sharing. And I did share most of the good shots in a Wordless Wednesday and a Photo Friday post.

Just as I was wrapping up and ready to head back to my car, I turned away from the Rideau Canal and faced TD Place, which was mostly covered by trees. The one distinguishing feature was the towering apartment building, which separates the stadium from Bank Street.

Cars were driving along Queen Elizabeth Drive, so I decided that I’d take a shot with the apartment building in the background and light trails in the foreground. I took three shots: one, to get the exposure right for the building; another shot, as a car went by but didn’t give me a good light trail; and a third, which gave me what I was looking for.

As I looked at the photo, I wondered why I took the shot. It wasn’t as good as the photos I shot of the bridge over the canal or as interesting as some of the shots I took in the Glebe.

I told myself I’d never share it.

Well, I was wrong. The other day, as I was looking for my Bluesky random photo of the day, I noticed that I’ve picked photos that I had shot with all three of the Nikon D-SLRs that I’ve owned over the years, even landing on photos I had taken with my Minolta X-700.

But I’ve never landed on a shot taken by my Sony.

I suppose there are far too few of those shots, so far, but then I started wondering what I had, besides hundreds of birds and the night shots. Rummaging around my photo database, I landed on this photo:

Sony α6700 | 25mm | f/14 | 20 seconds | ISO 125

The photo I thought I’d never share. I guess I have, now.

Happy Friday!