FALLING SOMEWHERE AS RAIN

 Having become used to the operation of the Samsung NX1000, I began to look at options for customisation. I am never content to just leave something pristine and straight out of the box, so in order to make it my own personal camera, I looked online to see what other accessories might be around. Aside from the usual lens options and a GPS module, there was nothing really exciting, so I looked at analogue lens options and found a universal adaptor with an NX mount on Amazon. Essentially a ring with a set of repositionable screws and a removable inner thread, the metal adaptor has the look of a ships steering wheel. It’s a ‘dumb’ adaptor, so autofocus or any powered elements won’t work, but it will accept almost any standard mount, by virtue of the screws, which grip the mount of the lens and hold it fast. As long as the flange distance is within a set range - i.e the focal distance for the lens meets the sensor cleanly - most lenses can happily work with the camera. On rare occasion...

Threadbare Until fairly recently, almost all my casual photography would appear on Instagram, a site which historically, was designed as a photo sharing device. However, as the social media market changed and moved into video, so the site moved its focus towards the more sensationalist and narcissistic side of the user base and concentrated on video clips and featured content. The attraction for me had always been the discrete size and format of the image - generally a neat square of 1x 1 and most camera apps for the mobile phone were directed at this format. The option to add a frame in imitation of a Polaroid print or a Kodakchrome slide added to the illusion of an analogue product and I quite enjoyed the idea of creating images, which I felt, could function equally well as a small print. Keys to the Kingdom Dry Season Using  the phone and various apps, it was a simple process to take a shot, adjust it or edit it on the phone and have it online in a matter of seconds. Historicall...

        Stop the World, I want to get off I have always been fascinated by photos, with their ability to hold a frozen moment in time and yet open a tiny window back to that quantum realm of untarnished memory. With the advent of digital photography, the floodgates opened on my ability to be much less choosy and precious over what I could shoot - the costs of film and development were removed and the scales fell from my eyes as to what was possible and to a degree, permissable. My first real camera was a Canon Sureshot and I marvelled at its autofocus ability and spent whole rolls of film shoving the camera down holes, over walls, in windows, with casual abandon, not knowing what I might find when the prints finally arrived in their glossy envelope. In 2013, after receiving a redundancy payment from a longstanding and stultifyingly dull job, I spent a small chunk on a digital camera of my own, a Samsung NX1000.  Bought primarily for its looks and having the abil...