Photographer

Steve Vit

Melbourne, Australia

I’m a forty-three year old newcomer to the world of photography.  Sure I dallied with family snapshots and holiday shots when I was in my teens and early twenties, but I was too busy with other pursuits to really give photography much of a chance.  My first really serious attempts at photography came when I bought a second-hand 35mm Praktica “outfit” with several lenses from a friend with whom I used to ride motorcycles back in 1985.  After shooting about 20 rolls of film, the Praktica succumbed to the vibrations from the motorcycle, but I still have it.  It makes a nice paperweight.

 My participation in the art of photography lapsed until last year.  I had always been interested in computers and all things electronic, so when I left my long-time employer to head overseas on an extended holiday, my choice of camera was pretty straightforward.  It was digital or nothing.  No paying for development of hideous photographs for me.  I could delete those myself and keep only those that I felt were any good, and I could email them to my envious friends as I travelled the globe.  What a bargain!

 Away I went armed with what was really my first “serious” camera – a Sony DSC-F505.  It had automatic settings as well as those for serious photographers, and that suited me just fine.  That camera went around the world with me and I snapped over 20,000 digital images in a six-month period.  Some of them were even good, well good enough for me to submit a few to some digital photography websites.  Others seemed to like them too, and I got a few POTD’s on a few sites such as digitalphotocontest.com, bestfoto.com, steves-digicams.com, lazeygecko.net, and digicamsplus.com.

 I still take photos for fun mostly, but I do measure my work by the opinions of others and actively submit to one or two sites still.  I can usually be found chatting to other photographers from around the world on digitalphotocritique.com.  I tend to live vicariously and so my favourite subject are travel and landscape shots.  I hate having my photo taken and don’t like to do portraits of others.

 I am a perfect example of what the “Average Joe” can achieve with a digital camera and a rudimentary knowledge of graphics editing packages.  I have no training in either, but I DO know what I like.  I’m about to upgrade my camera, not because you need to spend lots to produce good results from digital photography, but because I like the results so much that I want to be able to print my photos even bigger and hang them around the house.  I guess my approach to cameras is much the same as my approach to motorcycles – you can’t beat cubic capacity, or in the case of cameras, megapixels.

Location: Aurlandsfjord in Norway

Camera: Sony DSC-F505