Camera Market Day

Today I fronted up at the camera market despite the voices insistently buzzing in my head, like a particularly bad-tempered hive of bees, that this was a Very. Bad. Idea.

I'd been advised to show up early because there was nothing but dross left by midday. So I arrived ten minutes after the market opened, to discover the hall absolutely heaving with photographers. The scene is probably best described as a locust plague sweeping in on a paddock of sugarcane or wheat - fascinating to watch, but damn scary if you get in its path.

In all, I did three laps of the hall, watching the tables being ruthlessly and relentlessly stripped by buyers jockeying for position in front of each stall. I've been toying with the idea of buying a medium format camera for oh, the past 20 years* so this gave me a good opportunity to inspect a number of cameras and ask lots of probably dumb questions.

In return, I gave lots of hardcore snappers who were willing to talk to me (and there were many kindly, helpful men there) my full attention, providing them with the opportunity to vent about the soulessness of Photoshop, the iniquity of smartphone camera apps, and the end of photographic civilisation as we know it thanks to digital technology.

Of course, I really suck at Photoshop etc, so I was happy enough to agree that it's practically cheating. Part of me does think the whole digital photography thing lacks...beauty, for want of a better word.

But I still came home, cranked up Photoshop, converted my colour photo into a b&w one, changed the light levels and contrasts and tossed in just a hint of background glow. Hypocrite, much?

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* Spontaneity is clearly not my strong point.