It seems a thousand years ago when I was starting my photography journey back in Belfast during the troubles of the ’70s, shooting the punk bands and the lively characters on the streets of Belfast with my little Hanimex C110 camera. A miserable little camera to use, with equally miserable and over grainy results, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that it gave me an emotional release, a freedom I had never experienced before, and a freedom I couldn’t get any other way as a teenager battling a sectarian war on his doorstep.
I remember vividly the excitement of getting back the prints of the concerts I’d photographed, flicking through the images over and over again, and wishing they could be in the next week’s edition of the NME alongside Anton Corbijn’s beautiful images of the punk bands of the day.
Corbijn’s images mesmerized me, especially his early images of joy division, and that iconic image of them at the top of the escalator at Lancaster Gate underground station, it still makes me beam with happiness every time I see it, the ad has an amazing ability to place me back in Belfast with my camera. That is the power of photography, it inspires, it engages, it provokes, it transcends, and it asks questions and gives answers, and it has a different subjectivity to every single person that is part of that photographs journey, and that is the reason why we should be celebrating world photography day.
Image Courtesy: Anton Corbijn
Photography has changed so so much since my early obsession with image making and that little Haminex, closely followed by my first Pentax ME super that my dad bought me for my 16th birthday and every bit of kit that followed through my career from a wide-eyed kid to being a pro. Not only have we as an industry transcended the nostalgia of film, from 35mm in hundreds of different flavors, 120 rolls of film, polaroid’s and sheet film, to the modern digital world we all now express ourselves in. Nowadays, everyone is a photographer, and to a certain extent, that’s true. With that said, I have some loud opinions about rapid rise photographers who think they are the best in the world after taking some iPhone snaps, it takes years and years of experience to truly understand the craft, to understand light, shade and composition, not to mention answering global photo campaign briefs. But regardless of who takes the picture, how it was taken, where, or with what camera, there is one common denominator that we all have, and that is a desire to capture a moment in a way that we want it expressed visually.
Everything else that was part of the process of capturing, presenting and indeed viewing that photograph is mostly overlooked by the masses, but the process that is branded as photography will always be with us, and the emotions and creative happiness of people taking a photograph are no different now than it was when Henry Fox Talbot first published his photography finding in 1865. I am forever grateful for finding my passion for creative image-making and being able to express myself with a camera, and I will be unashamedly celebrating World Photography day and all the amazing images that I have been privileged to take and view.
Written by Carl Lyttle- Founder at Domeble
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