There are many types of photography, some types not as glamorous as other types. I could use up a couple paragraphs just listing them all; but since there only a couple that interest me, I won’t. But let me tell you about the type I enjoy the most, “Personal Photography”, sounds like I just made that up but I didn’t. See I’ve been doing this type since I was fourteen years old, need I mention that I’m fifty-one years old now. As a young lad I was always interested in photography, the one way I could show where I had been or what I had seen.
Most important of all, it’s the personal memories it gives me of days gone by. Days that I will never see again and the people whom I most likely will never meet again. This is the type of photography you can’t buy, and maybe of no interest to anybody else. The photographs of my Mom and Dad whom have passed away; I can look back on those photos and see the different stages of their lives and reminiscences of how those times were. Photographs of my children as they were growing up; photos that show the changes in each of them, and most of all the pictures that make each of my kids unique.
Sports and Landscape photography are what catches my main interest, and now and then an Air Show photography shoot. But Personal Photography is what keeps me snapping pictures. Now that we have computers and digital photography, (“if that sentence doesn’t show my age,”) I try to keep my hard drives and backups full of my personal photos. And I still have many photo albums full of black and white photographs, as well color images from color negatives. Someday I will transfer those Images to my computer also.
And no matter what type of camera you have, personal photography can be taken with a “high-end” digital SLR camera or even now days: a cell phone camera. You don’t need to be a certified professional photographer to take this type of photograph and you really don’t need to impress anyone but yourself. Don’t let time pass you by without photographing it, because it is a moment in time that you will own forever. I am glad I had taken photographs through the years of the people I love and the places I’ve been, but most of all the pictures of family and friends that have “past-away”. I seem to always recollect when I look at photograph I had taken, the time frame in my life of that snap shot.
Trust me when I say it’s cheaper now days to take photographs then it was when I started doing photography! So go out and get a point and shoot camera or the digital SLR that you have always wanted to get and start recording your own personal photography journal. And when you start taking pictures of people and places close to you and look back on them you’ll find personal photography is the most important photography in life.