Artists and Models

 I have never really given a lot of thought about being a good photographer.  It is just something I do for fun.  I am not a professional by any stretch of the imagination.  I have never used quality equipment.  I have never studied photography in school.  However this morning I was taking some time to look through some of my old photos I have taken over the years and have decided that perhaps I should take my photography a little more seriously.

Photography has been a hobby of mine since childhood.  I got my first camera when I was nine years old.  My sister Shelley was my model when I took photos with that first camera.  I would take her out and pose her in bizarre places and take her photo.  I never thought much about it at the time but looking back now I realize that I did use some creative imagination in those old photos.  I remember taking this photo above by  putting Shelley down inside this old house foundation in our neighborhood and telling her to reach out like she was trying to crawl out of a pit.   Looking back now almost fifty years later I am impressed with the way this photo turned out.

This is a photo I took in 1963 of Shelley.  Something in my warped little head thought this would be a fun photo.  We had a little black puppy at the time whose name was Susie and she was behind Shelly in the photo.  But I didn't take the dogs photo.  I took one with the dog behind her making it look like Shelley was tied to the dog house.  Shelley never really questioned what I was doing or why I was doing it.  She was just always the willing model.  

Of course every photo was not creative or unusual.  Some were just photos of that I snapped on the moment like this one of Shelley with her doll carriage.  But still looking at it now I am finding it a much better photo than I had realized.   It does tell a story of sorts.  

This photo was taken of Shelley at Ocean City, Maryland.  It's not set up or posed.  But looking back it today I really like the way it turned out.  It's just a little girl on the beach looking down at her feet oblivious to everything around her.   And once again it does tend to tell a story of some sort.  

I am not sure who was more responsible for these photos me or Shelley.  I took the photos but she was the willing model.  Who is to say who the creative one really was?  

I still love to take photographs.  I always joke saying give me a 16 gig photo chip and somewhere on that chip you will find a good photo.  Perhaps I should have taken it all a little more seriously over the years.  Maybe I should have been a photographer.  But then it would have stopped being fun and become work.