Call & Response

The Call: Softly Stella — Cheryl

I guess I came to photography rather late in life. I had a compact, 35mm film camera in college, and I used it to record birthday parties, trips home to family and friends, special evenings when my classmates and I dressed up for dances.

After graduating from college, I was a handed an SLR for my reporting job at my hometown, weekly newspaper. I learned to use it well enough (but never did any developing) and even got sent to a sports photography workshop (Stephen King’s wife, Tabitha, was a fellow participant — she wanted to take better shots of her kids’ soccer games).

After Dennis and I were married for nearly two years, we bought a used SLR, but he shot with it more than I did and I found using it a bit tricky (I think a good light meter may have helped in that regard).

Before our first child was born, I asked for a new compact Canon 35mm for Christmas, as the one I had used in college got demolished by my sister’s dog’s teeth and I wanted to be able to quickly snap pictures of the baby, once delivered into the world. I shot rolls and rolls of film when my first four were young.

By the time Jack, my fifth, was a year old, Dennis and I had taken the momentous step of buying an Olympus E-500, our first dSLR. I tried to take daily photos with it, in an effort to learn my way around the camera and its capabilities, but I didn’t become enamored with it (or photography in general) until I started using the camera (fitted with the 40-150mm lens) to capture the details of Luke’s baseball games. Downloading the hundreds of photos I’d take at each game, choosing the best to post in online galleries, sharing the galleries with other team parents, and receiving compliments on my photographic abilities transformed my camera from event recorder to creative tool.

Now, with a new camera (an Olympus E-5), new lenses, tens of thousands of photos on my computers, and an expanded knowledge of — and appreciation for — the art of photography, I feel like I’ve arrived at an exciting place with endless opportunities for exploration and growth.

The Response: A Small Moment — Jessica

Photography is:
an art
a science

a keeper of memories
a time machine

an explanation
an exploration

a story
a reality

a meditation
a treatise

painful
beautiful
exciting
frustrating

a compulsion
an obsession
a contemplation