One final unedited photo from the Minolta.

I really appreciate photographers who are both casual and unconventional. Nidhi at Unworn is both of those. I check her blog often just to remind myself of the kind of photography I enjoy. Her photos are not epic, and probably would not be found in National Geographic. But to me, they are so much more powerful. They are that quaint kind of beautiful; the kind that reminds us of the everyday beauty we all live in.

Minolta SR-T 101 (ISO400 film) w/ 50mm f/1.4-16

It works! Some unedited photos taken on the new Minolta a few weeks ago in moosehead lake, maine. I don’t have a battery for the light meter yet, so I had to take all of these blind. They turned out ok though.

I am now the proud owner of not just one, but TWO new cameras! Luckily, they were both quite cheap. I first bought an old school Diana+! It takes 120mm film, and is notoriously made fun of for its inability to take decent pictures. But it is just these traits that make it equally loved and widely used by individuals everywhere. It is also an icon of the lomography community, which I admire quite a bit because of their Ten Golden Rules. I cannot wait to get it out and see it in action.

SECOND, I was lucky enough to pick up an old, used Minolta SR-T 101 with a nice fixed 50mm lens at my favorite local antique shop for $20. What a steal! So, I will be doing quite a bit more film photography than I am used to in the coming months. Be prepared.

Here are a few unedited color photos chosen out of thousands from my semester in Italy last year. My post yesterday was in part inspired by my browsing through these photos. I am not a great photographer, but I do try to dabble occasionally. Of course, the best part of photography is working to improve, and luckily for me, I have a long way to go.

Photography is a very different medium than most others.  It is produced almost entirely by the efforts of technology, with the user only taking part in manipulation.  It engages a much different skill set than many other traditional forms.  And, perhaps because of their technological roots, photos represent the world we live in a very calculated and objective way.  Because of this close relationship to physical reality, one would think that art would be cast aside.  But that is far from the truth.

Art is found through photography in the way the photographer manipulates the photo.  Art exists in photography through subtlety.  And as often happens in art, this subtlety rests on a knife’s edge of abstraction and precision.  But the irony is often that good photography is at odds with the very essence of photography itself.  Good photography is not objective.  Good photography is subjective, as is all art.  Not necessarily a provocative kind of subjectivity, but rather a natural subjectivity.  The kind that speaks.  In a way, it is this juxtaposition of a very objective medium and a very subjective photographer that can produce good photography.

For me, this is the beauty of photography.  It is the beauty of art itself.  It is its essence.  It is what I struggle with, obsess over, and dream about.  But of course it is worth it because in the end you have produced something that has a part of you in it, and there is not much that I find more satisfying than that.