The Passion of Seeking the Image

How passionate are you about your hobbies and interests.  Mildly? Extremely?  I can vividly remember three events that brought home that passion for photography for me.  While in high school, I can still see myself leafing though the Sears Roebuck catalogue night after night, looking at the single lens reflex cameras, wanting one so badly, I couldn't stand it.  The camera I zeroed in on, and almost no one will remember this one, was the Mamiya-Sekor 1000DTL.  I could not afford a Nikon but I thought that one day that Mamiya could possibly be in reach.  I had no money nor anyway of getting money for a "nice" camera like the Mamiya.  It came with a 50mm lens and that was all I needed.

The second memory was while in college a couple of years later (1970).  My cousin, who is like a true brother to me, gave me his Minolta Hi-Matic 7 rangefinder camera when he returned as a grizzled veteran U.S. Marine from Vietnam.  The Minolta did not have interchangeable lenses, but the lens it did have, was sharp.  The lens was a 45mm F/1.8 lens and the camera had shutter speeds from 1/500th second down to 1/4 second.  Surprisingly, it also had an aperture preferred automatic mode.  How do I remember so vividly?  I have the camera sitting in front of me as I write.



Aspen Grove, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming.

 

When I received my first batch of prints back from the processor, a feeling came over me that I had never before experienced.  It was like some invisible force within came alive and I knew that my life would be irreversibly changed with the culmination of seeing something beautiful that I found, capture and made.  I have never been without a camera close by since.  And for many years now, I have carried a camera almost every time I leave the house.

The third event occurred in the fall of 1970, when I sold all of my deeply loved stereo equipment that I had used in my college dorm room for two years (and having a quality stereo setup was mandatory in those years) and bought my first single lens reflex camera.  It was a Minolta SR-T101 with a 55mm F/1.7 lens.  Totally manual operation.  Now, I could not rely on anything but having to learn the craft of photography to capture good images.  No automatic setting.  I had to learn it and it had to become second nature so I could understand and change settings in fast moving situations when I didn't have time to think!  Now, that was going to be an interesting process.

So, that is the genesis of my photographic passion.  I hope you have the same type of passion for your interests.  A passion makes life so much richer.

Please visit my website, www.dennismook.com as I have many, many more images for you to enjoy.

Enjoy!
Dennis Mook