Three years of actually trying

On November 2nd, I'll be celebrating the three year anniversary of the purchase of my first half-decent digital camera, the Canon EOS M50 II. I may be a self-confessed shopaholic, but there's more to celebrate than just one time where I got a shiny new toy - it marks the day when I decided that photography is worth investment beyond a good phone and a little bit of film.

I wanted to use this post to look back on how my photography has changed - mostly for the better - and to find (or invent) some significant milestones in my journey. It's also a great excuse to unearth some pre-blog, pre-2025 work - almost like a historic portfolio (not that I'd send this to a prospective non-existent client, but you get the idea).

My first photo that I don't hate

My first trip after the M50 purchase was a short stint in Marcoola with my (now) wife and her twin sister. This is a pretty standard type of shot for a holiday - it has a borderline influencer feel (derogatory) - but I like the leading lines on the fences, and anything featuring a beach is a winner for me. I have no clue if this was my original edit, though - this was before I started shelling out for Lightroom, so I was using a copy of Affinity Photo (a Photoshop clone without a subscription fee) to process RAWs... one photo at a time...

The rest of the photos from the trip, by holiday snapshot standards, are totally passable! I still had to learn to not let my highlights be destroyed (you can always lift a shadow later, but you can't always save a highlight), but they're serviceable as memories, and they were fun to take. Sometimes, that's enough.

Beginnings of a travel photographer

Does taking a lot of half-decent photos while on holidays make me a travel photographer? Not really - even to this day, photography for me is an activity that happens during a trip, not the reason for one, and I think that's a pretty key distinction. For the sake of this post, I will be brave and risk accusations of stolen valour.

When I bought the M50, I wanted a lighter, less complicated alternative to bringing a film camera to the United States (the SF7 is a bulky boy). Despite my disdain for the country (can they please just start paying people properly so that I don't have to tip?), my love for travel was born on this trip, and my new fondness for photography grew exponentially. Being surrounded by unfamiliar sights meant that I was always in the mood to take photos, and more photos means more practice, and more practice means more appreciation for the art form. A month in the States may have been too long for our mental health (why the hell did other non-gamblers tell us to go to Vegas, my now-most hated city in the world?), but it was an excellent excuse to develop my skills.

As you'd expect, there's a lot to criticise in this collection. For each decent photo, there's another five to ten that were good enough at the time to export, but wouldn't even make it off the camera today (it might've helped my point to add said bad photos to this post, but I wanted to use the space to celebrate my successes - and my ego is too fragile). My ability to compose a scene was, in most cases, non-existent. Plus, my approach to editing was to just slap on one of Lightroom's Auto+ Retro presets - not terrible, but just a bit bland and uninspired to my 2025 eyes.

But I needed to take these photos to find out what makes them mediocre, and getting the M50 meant that there was no additional cost in making mistakes (compared to my original plan to bring a film camera for the whole trip). You cannot start out as a prodigy, and I feel no shame in saying that most photos from this trip look a bit crap - I'm just glad that I got to take them.

Obvious advice that I desperately needed

When my friend Amy told me to pay attention to the rule of thirds, and started cropping my photos in front of me to show how they could've been better if I had done that to begin with, I took it to heart. The thirds overlay was immediately enabled on all of my cameras, and it has since shaped my photography so aggressively that, while it may now be off (I kept lining people up in ways I didn't like), it's still burned into my brain.

Amy's photography advice, while not constant, has been a critical guiding hand for my work. Looking back on the past few years, while I have valued praise and feedback from everyone I care about in my life, I've actively sought out approval from her and Jemima (who sold me the SF7 all those years ago and whose work I really admire) the most.

Trying my hand at colour work

Picture this - you're taking a weekend trip to the Gold Coast to see the Harry Styles, live in concert (ignore the fact that you're not a big Harry Styles fan, and that you weren't psyched to spend the $220 on the tickets). How do you celebrate? By trying your hand at doing a Lightroom preset.

I made a preset for this trip that incorporated the main two colours of the tour, which I think were a light blue (in the highlights) and a pink (in the shadows). It's a little overbearing in places, and I probably could've done some alterations to other colours to make it a bit nicer, but it was a good first attempt at doing my own custom colours for my photos.

For that year's Easter camping trip, I tried my hand again at doing my own preset, only with much, much, much less success. What the hell was I thinking when I decided on these colours? Everything's underexposed, there's a garish phone HDR vibe across the board, and I accidentally baked a warm white balance in. These are the only photos that I look back on with a bit of shame - my ability to compose a shot was improving, but I could've sworn I had more taste than this.

A few words on my "first" camera

The M50 was not my actual first camera - that honour goes to a little 5MP point-and-shoot that I got for Christmas in 2005. Unfortunately, all of the undoubtedly prize-winning photos that I took at age seven have disappeared to lax data backup methodologies, so we won't be celebrating twenty years of photography today. As discussed previously, the M50 was not even my first camera as an adult - that honour goes to a film SLR from the 90s, the Pentax SF7. But again, we're ignoring this, as my early adventures into film were more novelty than a genuine attempt at artistic expression. We're also ignoring any phones that I've owned. Honest, my definition of "first" camera is a lie for the sake of convenience.

When I was shopping for my "first" camera, I was steered to the M50 by a friend who insisted that "all digital cameras are the same, and this one is cheap and good enough". While I would contest this now, it was true enough for a beginner photographer, and the M50 was a great on-ramp for my early days. The 22mm f/2 pancake taught me that not being able to zoom leads to better photos (especially when compared to the terrible kit lens), and I fell in love with the 35mm focal length (which, I think, is still my most used focal length today). Most importantly, the M50 was an upgrade from my phone - both in image quality and tactile experience - and was small enough to fit in my little sling bag.

I may be parting ways with it now - no point keeping it when it just collects dust on my shelf - but my time with the M50 was invaluable, and I'd recommend it to anyone who wants something reliable and cheap (especially anyone who wants to buy mine specifically).

Where was the turning point?

My earlier work is not bereft of keepers, but the best single stretch of photos that I can identify from 2023 was a day trip to Forgan Park with some mates. I brought a recently acquired 75-300mm on my GX9 and got to work snapping pictures of the local water fowl population. The composition in many of these pictures is clean, and the colours aren't too overbearing.

From here on out, as I scroll through my Lightroom exports, the percentage of photos that meet my current standards of a keeper slowly increase. Some days still have editing choices that I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole today, but composition hits the mark more and more, and identity begins to develop. Also, there's a huge stretch that's just littered with birds.

Around this time, there was also a pretty great run of party and karaoke photos with friends and family. However, you'll have to take my word for it, as I can't be bothered to get their consent for sharing them, or to redact that many faces.

How'd I do in 2024?

Another year of experimentation and improvement. I had my harsh blue and orange preset era, I got more into street photography (a whole year working in South Brisbane will do that), and I was able to travel and see more of the world. This was the year where I got over the hump - I went from taking a few good photos in a big glut of everything else, to knowing what might make a photo good before taking it. Feedback for my work also got more honest in 2024, which, while difficult to hear sometimes (again, fragile ego), has been very helpful.

And 2025?

2025's work is already heavily featured across this blog, so I won't be including any here - I'd be double-dipping on any retrospectives I decide to do! My focus this year has just been to keep my photography muscles active during wedding stress, and to tone it down a bit in Lightroom. Bird photography has also unintentionally taken a backseat, as has my enthusiasm for street (you can only take photos on your morning commute so many times before it gets a little tiresome).

Where to from here?

I've learned to follow photography rules - especially an adherence to the almighty thirds - but now it's time to learn to competently break them. A lot of the photography I admire the most is a little messier, a little more raw, and I would like to try and recreate that in my work. My inclination towards rigid, clean shots may hold me back in the long run, so I need to learn to look past the "best" shot for an even better one.

Another thing I'd really like to do is be able to share my work in a physical way. I've been meaning to turn one of my trips into an album, or a magazine, but I would also love to put on a gallery show someday. I'm not sure I'm quite public space-ready, so I've been workshopping some ideas for building a temporary installation in our garage. We'll see if I can care about that idea for longer than a fortnight and actually make it happen.

Above all, I just want to make more time to take photos in fun and interesting places. With the wedding done and dusted, my free time has become guilt-free again. As I continue to tire of my immediate surroundings, weekends need to be used as a tool for adventure. The only way to improve is through consistent practice - if I have to enjoy life more to get that practice, then so be it.

What I'm listening to: "no scope" - crushed
What I'm reading: ”The Penguin History of Modern Vietnam” - Christopher Goscha
What I'm playing: Risk of Rain Returns

I could've scheduled this post for the actual anniversary, but I was feeling impatient.