The formative years in a Photographic career

What do you remember about your first camera, or taking pictures for the first time? This was for me an intensely exciting time. For the first time in my life I could record on film images that I had pointed the camera at. Anyone remember the old Box Brownie, or am I reaching the limits of your memories of photography? I go back to the days of the Nikkormat FT2 and the Nikon F2, both of which I owned and used extensively. Ah, the days of youth! We felt nothing about crawling through bush and grass, in the rain, camera in hand, to capture images of flowers, grasses, etc. from a macro perspective. I spent weekends wandering around the city centre taking pictures of buildings, graffiti, and what ever else took my fancy. There was no Live View mode, and you couldn't look at the results of the images you had just captured in the LCD review on the back of the camera as you do today. You had Aperture and Shutter speeds to adjust the exposures. ISO was set to the speed of the film you were using, and this was never altered, unless you wanted to have the film pushed or pulled in post-processing. For this you would have to take the film to a good professional photo lab, as this option of ISO-altering was not handled by the standard chemist assistant where most took their films to be processed. Then there was the week-long wait to get your slides or prints back, and it was with sweaty shaking hands that you first opened the envelope, and then took first look at the results of your imaging efforts. So Live View/Review back then took a week! Depending on how carefully you had planned and managed your photo shoot, you might find the majority of a 36-exposure roll of film came out pretty well. You studied the photos, and really learned from your mistakes, as it would take another photo shoot and another week's wait to see if you had got it right the second time around. Not to mention forking out more hard-earned money for the second time for the same project! That was of course if you could repeat the shoot...the images might have been from when you were on holiday in Durban! I could reminisce for pages on the early days I enjoyed making my first images, but will save this for a later blog. What are your experiences and memories from your first photographic experiences? Share them with us!