My first shot (with purpose)

This is the very first shot I took with the conscious intention of “taking a photo.” No technical skill, no reading of manuals—just a camera, a chair abandoned in a field, and the instinct to frame it. I remember being fascinated by the contrast: the artificial shape of the chair dropped into a plot of neglected green, hemmed by broken walls. No narrative, just a question mark.

I had no clue what I was doing. Exposure? Focus? Aperture? The camera was almost fully automatic, and I didn’t even think about composition rules. But the instinct to isolate the subject and centralise the frame kicked in, and so did a vague sense of perspective. The focal plane wasn’t sharp—still isn’t—but even that contributed to the sense of a world just slightly out of order.

Back then, learning-by-doing meant you committed errors that cost real money. Film wasn’t forgiving. Each mistake had a price tag and a wait time of weeks. I never developed a romanticism for that process, though. I’ve always preferred understanding over mystique.

Digital makes it easier, faster, cheaper—and noisier. Everyone’s a “photographer” now, armed with tools that can fix everything but the absence of a gaze. I don’t mourn the old days, but I do miss the friction that forced you to think before clicking. This image reminds me of that origin—of the precise moment where I stopped snapping and started looking.