The Time I Almost QUIT Photography
December 15, 2022 issue #7 – I hid my camera in a drawer for over 6-months
I mentioned in the November 18, 2022, issue of this newsletter that I didn’t get my first camera until I was 15 – a Kodak Instamatic. I had to wait until I was 18 to get my first good camera – a Canon AE-1.
Before I bought that good camera, I used to make lists of people, places, and things I thought would make a good photograph. One of those places is a Lighthouse in Buffalo. It’s located at the mouth of the Buffalo River to Lake Erie. Built in 1833, Buffalo Main Light, or Buffalo Lighthouse, as most of us call it, is said to be the oldest building in Buffalo. It is also one of the most photographed buildings in Western New York – but, at that time, I didn’t know that.
You have to remember; there wasn’t any internet in 1978 – I only saw a picture or two of that Lighthouse, so I had no way of knowing if photographers often flocked to it to take pictures of it. To me, it sounded like a brilliant, original idea. I began to look into it a bit more and realized that during the winter, if one positioned themselves just north of the lighthouse, at a place called the Erie Basin Marina. The sun would set behind the lighthouse.
I purchased my camera during the summer, and at that time of year, the sun would set further out over Lake Erie, so if one stood at the Erie Basin Marina to take the photo, the sun would be far to the right - probably out of frame since the only lens I owned was the 50mm that I bought with the camera. That wasn’t acceptable to me – I needed to take my Pulitzer prize-winning picture of that lighthouse with the sun behind it.
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