Welcome to Chromatic Dramatic

Post Number One.

As I officially have no followers, I’ll try keep this one short, and try and briefly give you and overview of what I’m trying to achieve in this blog.

Chromatic Dramatic is about photography, and developing my photography skills.

Ever since I can remember, I’ve loved photography. Loved looking at photos. Loved taking photos.

One of the first photos I can remember taking is of my Mum and my Sister on a paddle steamer in Echuca (I’ll try and dig out the photo one day). It was with my Mum’s Pentax K-1000 (actually I suspect it was a precursor to a K1000). You know the sort of thing that your mum would focus and give back to you in order to take the pic. One day when I visit Mum I’ll dig it out and post.

I then remember my first camera. No idea what it was, but it would take 110 film cartridges, and a Flashcube on the top.

Yeah it wasn’t great stuff, but it fulfilled my every desire at the time, and I vividly remember taking photos of Australia II when it came to town on its tour around Australia after winning the American’s Cup in 1983. The only problem was that I couldn’t fit the whole thing in one photo, and I couldn’t get close enough to see the keel and take a photo.

Over the next how many years, photography would come and go, doing photography at school, then quickly dropping it again, as I got into a series of other things (mainly sport), before being given my own SLR for my 18th Birthday. This was a second hand Pentax K-1000, with 50mm lens and 28 – 200mm Graflex Zoom. The latter which was a massive pain to focus (except for portraits) courtesy of a lack of focusing prism.

Again I just dabbled around the edges of photography until my last year living on campus at Uni. I finally got stuck into the dark room and loved burning and dodging photos of my friends to bring out their worst qualities (I should try and full that one out of my mate Frog).

It was this year that reignited the flame, especially when I was asked to fill in for the College Photographer for the Intercollegiate Rowing Race. I got to experiment with a nice camera (Canon EOS 300), with some nice fast glass. My love affair with Canon began.

With my 21st birthday around the corner, I convinced my folks to upgrade my camera, and the rest is history.

Since that time I’m on my fifth SLR (courtesy of the first three being stolen), and my first DSLR (now if I could make some money for this thing, I could upgrade… ha ha, unlikely). I’ve also had plenty of 35mm point and shoots which are perfect for travelling, which still take some great photos (eg below, which the photos made the ruins look much better than they were).

Scotland 2001 (Short on a Pentax 35mm point and shoot)

For the last 10 or 12 years, I’ve been pretty consistent with taking photos, being behind the lens more often than in front of it. But tellingly I haven’t improved much in that time, with the photos just largely being a repeat of something I’ve taken before. I’ve had some good ones, but a lot of chaff.

Two events have since made me want to develop my skills further.

1) Family & 2) Rugby

1) Family

As you can see from above, my experience growing up, but especially having my Mum capture some fantastic photos of us all, I wanted to do the same, as I still love pulling out the family albums, and what my kids to do the same.

So in a holiday to Japan with my wife (just prior to having kids), we decided to get a DLSR as a way of capturing those fantastic moments of our children growing up.

2) Rugby

Waverley Rugby Club Vs Briars – 2008

For four or so years, I’ve been taking photos of my rugby club. I was Secretary of our Club. It was having problems and taking photos as often as I could was a way of engaging with our members. I loved it, and I always was trying to improve my shots, playing with the settings etc etc. I learnt more about my camera in this time than any before it.

Unfortunately with all the administrative stuff I didn’t have time to do too much else, especially in post processing.

Between these two events I’ve probably taken ~15,000 photos in the last four years. Unfortunately the ratio of good photos isn’t as high as I would have liked. Having now dropped my involvement in the rugby club. My time seems to be much freer, so here I am…

Where to now?

With time, Chromatic Dramatic will evolve. To what, I’ve no idea. I don’t know what my style is (it was once portraits). For the moment I’m just going to focus on learning. Developing my skills, and see if any particular passion takes me.

I’ll probably also through some general life stuff in here too.

Sooo… the above was much more verbose than I ever intended. In future I’ll try and keep the text down, and the photos up.

For the moment, here are some sample photos from over the years. Not necessarily my best, just what I could quickly put to hand.