PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

Ever since I can remember, my father has had a camera in his hand at every event. He learned how to use one as a boy with the help of my grandfather. They would spend days taking pictures and experimenting to get the result they wanted. Of course they used really old film cameras that are really hard to use like the German Rolleiflex which is a medium format camera with twin lenses. His first, very own camera was the Minolta 7000; the first automatic film camera in the world released in 1985. With the Minolta, taking pictures was so much easier because of the automatic focus and the automatic light meter but since he already knew the basics it was even more easier. As the years went by he kept “updating” his cameras until they weren’t film cameras anymore and he started buying digital cameras. No, my father isn’t a photographer but he likes it as a hobby. I thought of the cameras as my dad’s treasures. He didn’t let anybody use them or even touch them and we all respected that up until I; the youngest of my siblings, started loving photography and wanted to use them so badly. I thought my dad liked photography because of all the technique that it needs but one day he told me that he liked to take pictures to capture moments, capture memories that one day your mind will not remember and will want to remember. He then showed me a really fat album he had stored in his closet. I had never seen it in my life; he had pictures of all my family, one at a time, one year at a time. Now that I stop and think about it my dad is a genius and I admire him for that. He used these cameras to remember the simple laughters, the beautiful moments we have in this life that don’t last if we don’t have something to remember them by. My dad then started teaching me at about age ten and we started having these unusual bonding times because of this precious object. To the date, my father and I still learn about photography more and more and now he even lets me use his old Minolta to learn how film cameras work and how they compare to the “new and (not so much) improved” cameras. If it weren’t for these cameras, I think I wouldn’t be so close to my dad.