i love getting new cameras. last year alone i received four new cameras and they unfortunately have yet to be utilized to their full potential. there was this period last year where i had had enough of taking photographs using film, and primarily relegated my picture taking using my 400D and occasionally my cellphone. most of the time i get intensely caught up with my 400D that i tend to forget that i have with me my cellphone and my Meopta Flexaret VII. this is when i start pulling out the latter cameras and take obligatory shots to either fill up my negatives or my Instagram feed. in the midst of fiddling with the cellphone's shitty exposure settings and the Flexaret's manual focus and metering, i end up having less than satisfactory shots that feel more like afterthoughts rather than one that is properly composed, exposed, and anticipated. and finally, having being satisfied with taking my obligatory shots, i stuff my secondary cameras in my bag, struggle to pull out my primary camera, turn it on, and miss some moments of photographic gold.
this exasperating task of deciding which camera to use ultimately causes me to lose focus, and doesn't do any of my photographs any justice. there is a strange duality in my photo feeds - the Instagram feed being too orchestrated and impersonal (i.e. boring), while my other feeds suggests a more spontaneous observation (i.e. less boring). presenting my photographs in two different manners drives me slightly up the wall because my photographs have varying tones across different media, and this ultimately makes my photographs seem inconsistent.
my experimentation with the Olympus E-PL3 yielded a cold and gritty feel to my photographs - a tone i had been fascinated with at that time, though its novelty started spreading thin when i actually started getting depressed at the end of that experimentation period. plus compiling photographs and including the always out-of-place E-PL3 photographs made me decide to never return to that phase.
my Instagram photographs (i.e. my cellphone photos) exuded one particular element of photography i personally dislike - pretentiousness. a strange miasma hits me whenever i attempt to photograph something for Instagram, and i find myself taking some of the most uninspired photographs. i'm not sure whether my crappy cellphone is to blame, or the inane notion of photographing something "nice" for Instagram is causing me to lose interest in photography faster than i can apply a VSCO Cam filter onto my photos. Instagram has a tepid culture of capturing moments too carefully sculpted for my taste - there is no way an Instagram user is able to command perfect lighting in each of their shots, yet they are still capable of achieving those immaculately lighted shots every time! perhaps a whole bunch of Instagram users are perfectionists, and to each their own. i somehow find myself feeling less inspired by this medium. for what it's worth, the photographs are no doubt of high quality and craftsmanship - they just leave me detached as of late.
and this leads me straight back to why i am back in the saddle with my 400D. at least with one camera, i am able to focus all my attention on one device, and perhaps regain some lost inspiration. there will come a time when i have the itch to load a roll of film into my T2, or perhaps my UWS. it's a vicious cycle of never being satisfied with what one has, and perhaps this completely disregards my whole tirade with taking pictures using different cameras. for now, i have my 400D paired with Lightroom, and this is enough to keep me happy and satiated. in my defense, i love all my cameras to bits. i just wish that there was a better way of presenting them without seeming like my work is one big mess of varying phases and fervor.
