The "I'm a pro now, but I used to really suck" Thread

[cherylynne1]

I've been really disappointed with everything I've been shooting lately, and I keep trying to convince myself that every photographer I admire was once as crappy as me, but I don't really believe it.

So here's your challenge: Post a photo from the beginning of your photographic journey. Bonus points if it's extra pretentious or "artsy." And if you happen to have a more recent picture of the same subject, feel free to include that to show your progress.

And please, no "Oh, it's so bad, it only won 50 awards, I'm so embarrassed..." No. Just no. Only truly bad beginner photos, please.

Thanks, guys!!

 

[Braineack]

been shooting since HS. I still just take cat pictures.

most of it got worse with the invention of microscopic sensors.

 

[Didereaux]

Not going to play, but I will give you that old hackneyed quote attributed to Cartier-Bresson "Your first 10,000 photos are your worst" or something along those lines. Wanting to see where you fit in an 'it's so bad' contest is just flat out stupid, and self defeating. Instead of giving others a 'challenge' give yourself one! Hey, now there's an original thought! LOL

 

[Overread]

Am I allowed to post even if I'm still not a pro?

Also you might like this

 

[Didereaux]

An extraordinary video, from a rather extraordinary individual. What he highlights so well is that every creative person who ever lived, or who ever will live faces periods of massive depression, and self doubt. Their inner strength determines whether they survive and produce a body of work worthy of time. That strength and determination, like their vision, is from inside their own heads, not from outside platitudes.

 

[cherylynne1]

I wish I were still under 10,000!! Maybe we can extend that number now that cameras are shooting 11 fps? I am practicing, and I am improving. It's just hard sometimes. I guess I did come off as somewhat "woest me" in the original post, but I didn't mean to. I meant this as more of a lighthearted reflection on how far people can come.

Overread, I love the photo and the video! Zack Arias is great. It's hard to imagine someone like him ever doubting himself. Thanks for posting it!

 

[limr]

Okay, I'll play because I think it's actually quite useful to go back to look at old work. It can be encouraging to see how far we've come, but it also might be useful to look at early triumphs to be reminded of the reasons why we decided to stick with it

Oh, and I'm not a pro but I'm playing anyway!

An early fail (I've posted this before) but at least I know why it was a fail now. I wanted to get an artsy, bokehlicious sort of a shot, darker lighting. What I did wrong was to try to do this with my crappy Vivitar point and shoot, that couldn't focus close enough, had an auto flash, and didn't have a wide enough aperture setting to get the cool oof focus look I wanted. So I can blame the camera (and my cheap college-girl water goblets!) (To take my fair share of the blame, I only realized these failings years later. At the time, I had no idea what went wrong. Well, I did know enough to realize I needed to have a camera that I could control!)



Many years later, I accomplished this with my K1000 (or maybe it was Spot? Can't remember. I know I was testing the limits of a lens faster than the ones I was used to):



And another one:
I remember what I wanted to do with this shot, but it came out...wrong and boring. (Ignore the dust spots - it's a scan of a print.) I know where I took this shot but can't remember if it was before or after I got the K1000. I would like to claim for sure that it was before, so I could blame the point and shoot again, but it might have been with the K1000.



And last year, I took a similar shot with the Zorki:



(You can see them bigger if you click on them - they were a bit too large to do them full-sized in the post.)

Finally, I'll share one that was definitely one of the first I did with the K1000. I am sure I can do better now, but at the time, I was super excited about it. I remember that I wanted to cut the glare that would come off the keyboard, and also give it a dreamier sort of a look, so I pulled the sheer curtain tight over the lens as a make-shift filter. While it's not the most exciting photo, it was early proof to me that I could in fact learn to make the picture in my head match much more closely to the picture I see on the print.

 

[cherylynne1]

That's fascinating, limr! I feel like I can actually see the image you had in your mind, and watching the development from idea to reality is amazing!!

 

[dennybeall]

I resurrected something a while back - shot with a Nikon F on Tri-X as I recall.
This was for a Senior Class President campaign sign for the guy who's driving the Corvair. He's now a big time lawyer for the Justice Department............