An amateur photo trap.

Recently I read a couple of articles about vintage point & shoot digital Cameras. As I was looking at these images, I must admit to being really impressed by some of what I was seeing. So much so that I felt inspired to pull out a couple of my older cameras. Terrific so I set up a cheap lightbox, fired off some macro shots of a watch, model airplanes and a couple of other subjects. Then I went for a short photo walk around Haymarket VA. An especially photogenic location in Haymarket is the historic St. Paul’s Episcopal Church which was built in 1803. Several of the graves, and markers in the cemetery PRE- date the American Civil War which lasted from 1861 to 1865.

The camera I used for this little photo walk was the 3 Megapixel Nikon CoolPix 3200 that was introduced in 2004. As I was snapping away, I kept looking at the screen, and though the images were okay, they clearly were nothing inspiring. Perhaps when I get home, they will look a bit better on the big screen. Annoyingly they were mediocre at best.

After a considerable amount of thought it occurred to me that I had fallen into a trap that I have seen many “visual artists” fall into. Rather than relying upon my own “vision” I was unintentionally trying to copy the styles of other photogs. With almost all artistic expressions, it really doesn’t matter where you are at with your chosen art form. There will always be a certain “look” you create, this look is unique to you as a visual artist. With artistic critiques there is always going to be a certain amount of "ego busting". Providing it is not insulting, you can learn a great deal when you listen to other people’s opinions. However, never forget for you to snap that picture, you must have seen something.

Curiously, this little photo project I started is not what I originally intended it to be, however it has been a lot of fun. Hopefully, I can continue it with several other "vintage digital" cameras in the coming weeks.

Below are the original images I shot with my Nikon D3200. The only corrections that have been made are to switch several from horizontal to vertical, brightness and some minor cropping. All were shot at the maximum resolution. To create the The Black & White images I used the in camera B&W creative effect. If you are curious about the town of Haymarket, Virginia this is a link to their web site: https://www.townofhaymarket.org/