Sunday, November 14, 2010

My first camera

The other day, I bought a kiddie digital camera (marketed by Crayola) for Andrew. I gave it to him today and he couldn't put it down. He took hundreds of poorly framed pictures. I felt overjoyed that he seemed to enjoy the camera as much as I had hoped. Watching him reminded me of my first camera.

I think I was either eight or ten years old. I know that the occasion was Christmas. The camera my family had been using had been two forms of Polaroids: the first had an accordion lens and the photographer had to actually pull the picture out of the camera and the newest was a fancy one where the camera spit the picture out the front. I adored taking pictures with the second one. Anyway, the last gift under the tree was for me. It was a flat, kind of slender box and I had no clue what it was. I opened it and found a Kodak 110 camera. I remember crying I was so happy. I hadn't asked for one, but I had dreamed of having my own camera. This started a life long love of photography. I went on to take pictures for both my high school and college newspapers. I once took pictures for a friend's wedding. I actually considered it as a career. But, as usual, self-doubt reared its ugly head and forced me to take the safe path.

Hmmm, maybe there's a lesson there.

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