This year, I’ve had the opportunity to do and see many things. I got an internship at the local Rockaway newspaper The Wave, which will start in the Fall and learned how to operate a film camera. The one I own (which you’ve seen on the Home page) is a Nikon FM10. You can get this at B&H Photo, which specializes in technology and cameras + camera film. I only used black and white film for my photography class, so I didn’t get the opportunity to do color film.

One special piece of advice my professor taught me: “You control the camera, the camera does not control you.”

To be honest, I did have a rough start with my camera at first because I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. How can I get a good shot? What do I do to adjust the lighting? What would make the perfect subject?

I don’t know why I had trouble with this. When I was doing an assignment for Pandora’s Box (the school newspaper for CUNY York College), I didn’t have as much problems. Either it was someone I was interviewing or a gathering, I managed to get good photos. A little cropping there, increases the brightness of the photo a bit, and done! Oh, don’t forget the caption, too!

But a cell phone is a lot different than a film camera.

My first two rolls were…lackluster to say the least.

The next two were on people portraits and actually I had a lot of fun with it.

I was walking down the beach by my home when I came across a skate park. I haven’t been to the beach in years so I was surprised when I saw it. I met a young man and asked if I could take his picture and he obliged. In my opinion, this is one of my best pictures. The contrast between black and white and the pose in general is very good. I wish that there was a special printer or something at school so I could easily transfer this to a computer easily. I used my cell phone to take a picture and uploaded it to the site. It was very hard to take over the kitchen counter and making my shadow didn’t screw it up.