Long Exposure
It’s been a lifetime since I last thought about balancing aperture with shutter speed under the constraints of ISO. Photography was a big part of my early twenties. It ended twice over in the same season: I partitioned the only external drive holding my digital shots to install Linux and formatted the whole thing by mistake, and I sold my Canon EOS 20D, lens, and speedlight to cover the fees on my green card application. I pushed it down and moved on, and never looked back at what had given me so much freedom of expression.
I recently bought a FUJIFILM X-T30 III. It’s smaller than the old Canon, and the sensor is far better. I’m no longer a graphic designer by profession, and I’m not shooting editorial assignments, so I intend to keep it simple. It’s slowly coming back as I battle with meters and settings, often taking a picture at the wrong aperture or missing a composition because I’m too distracted tinkering with the dials.
The version of me who shot with the Canon had nothing but time and never once had to justify spending it. Now everything is constrained. There’s no more “let’s spend a day shooting in the woods and see what comes out of it.” There are just a few minutes to get what I can.
