A question I get asked pretty regularly is when I started doing photography. So I figured it was a good place for this, the first postcard from this fragile world.
There are so many different beginnings. Disposable cameras on childhood vacations that we’s develop at the local drugstore. The film camera I got for Christmas when I turned 8. The digital cameras I got across middle and high school and college so I could make YouTube videos. Somewhere in there we all got smart phones and we all became photographers.
I suppose I’ve always liked and been interested in photography. But we’ll put an official beginning to this endeavor in December of 2022. I fell down a YouTube rabbit hole, was gifted my Grandma’s Pentax k-1000, bought two roles of Portra 400, and I was off.
This is not the first photo I took, though I do really love that picture as well. This is from the second role, from a drive I took up the Poudre Canyon that stretches northwest from my second hometown, Fort Collins, Colorado.
It seemed appropriate— sunset over snow dusted mountain ridges in December. The end of a day. The end of a year. But by the magic of photons trapped in silver halide crystals, another beginning.
There are many more beginnings after that, and will continue to be. But the only other one I will remark upon is this- the beginning of postcards from this fragile world. Thank you for reading. I’ll write to you again soon.
-Ponders
