Trying new things

One of the things I've learned about myself throughout the years is that I can get bored quite easily. I have an interest in many things, and I love jumping into something new and learning about it.

A few years ago, I decided to get a camera and start a YouTube channel. It was fun learning a little about how cameras worked, lenses, video editing, and so on. I kept creating content for a few years, but that faded. Life, busyness, and the other usual suspects got in the way. The camera and equipment were just sitting there collecting dust, so I decided to sell them - including the camera. If I wasn't going to use them, why keep them, right?

Fast forward a couple of years, and I once again get the itch to get a camera, but this time to take photos. Again, I’m not sure what drove me to do it, but I ended up getting another camera (a Sony camera this time). I did my research, as I did before, and decided on the Sony ZVe-10. It was reasonably priced second-hand and had features useful for both capturing videos and photos. One of my other hobbies is online racing, so I thought I could stream or record videos of my races.

Having multiple functions means the purchase was justified! Yes, we all need self-confirmation (delusions) every once in a while to justify decisions we make.

Anyway, I got the camera and a few cheap but great lenses from Viltrox.

One of the first things I photographed was a toy soldier that was once left at my house years ago. I decided to put it in poses and take pictures. Simple, but it was fun to do. When I saw the pictures from this “photoshoot”, I decided to get Lightroom to enhance them. Yes, for a mere hobby, this is a little much, but hey, what can I say… I am bored and open to learning new things, so what the hell. While it seems irresponsible to go straight to Lightroom at this point, I didn’t do it thoughtlessly; I was never going to go down the subscription model (Adobe is notorious for their disgusting subscription prices). I searched around and found a lifetime license key for very little. These are apparently unused license keys being resold from businesses that had gone bust. Either way, I got Adobe Lightroom for less than £30. To make an already long story short, I fixed up the pictures; they looked great, and I decided to upload them to Unsplash (since I’ve come to know them through the Vocal editor).

Then came my newest hobby: 3D printing and 3D modelling. If you ask why 3D printing, I would say “it looked interesting” and nothing else. So I got a 3D printer and printed very useful accessories for my sim racing cockpit, as well as little things I needed around the house (there are many free already-made models online). The latest thing I printed was a full chess board and pieces, and they turned out beautiful (see the over-dramatic picture below):

The next step was naturally to create something from scratch myself. I created an O-ring seal for my shower head, and now it doesn’t leak anymore, a simple camera mount for my sim racing cockpit so that I can film whenever I want to, and a storage box for the chess pieces I mentioned earlier. It has been fun learning CAD modelling and actually having my creations appear in real life through 3D printing.

Now back to photography and why I mentioned 3D printing in the first place. It’s funny how hobbies meld together and are never truly independent interests; 3D printing and CAD modelling helped me with some sim racing accessories I needed, and now it’s even helping create models to photograph.

The main picture of this story (at the very top) is of a toy soldier consoling a toy bunny while the bunny is looking pensively towards the windows. The toy soldier was the one I mentioned earlier, but the bunny was 3D printed.

My thoughts for the composition of that photo were that the bunny was longing to go outside and run like the other bunnies did, not realising it was made of plastic. The soldier simply sat beside him and gently consoled him. For some reason, I had the bunny on that glass table while I was changing lenses on the camera, and I thought I’d take a few photos. I thought the light coming in off the window was beautiful, so I decided to position the bunny where it was and took the photo. With a little colour grading, I made the whole scene give off that pensive feeling. After that, I took a few more photos with different toys. Here are a few examples, followed by my thoughts behind them:

Here I was eating an ice lolly (popsicle for my friends in the states) and decided to have the soldier hold it like a rifle. Don't know why, but it turned out cool I think.

I printed a small toy car, and then printed another scaled up version. This is a playful one representing a parent carrying his child on his shoulders. its a playful and silly imagining meant to convey nostalgia, family and the relationship between father and son. I've taken a few pictures with these two cars as "muses" if you will.

Here the soldier makes an appearance. A silly story being told about the soldier trying to rescue a child from falling down to the abyss, while the parent is looking on anxiously. The thing I remember being the most annoying with this one was trying to get the soldier's hand to properly grip the windshield of that toy car.

This one is more or less that same as the main picture, only more focused on the initial loneliness, as the soldier is not yet there to console the bunny.

Just a quick note, these pictures look a lot better when downloaded because of course they're compressed when they're in websites etc.

I can't remember why exactly I wrote this piece, but I'll try to end it in some kind of conclusion: Try new things because you don't know what you don't know.

I found photography interesting so I went ahead and tried it out and it has been fun telling stories in still images. Of course I am by no means even close to professional (or even amateur for that matter), but that won't stop me from having fun learning about this new hobby and pushing myself.