12
…The age I had when they trusted me with a real life size camera, an old Yashica Elektro 35, borrowed from a relative to make pictures during a family gathering.
Although very young and unexperienced, it felt very important to me to deliver some good images.
Perhaps they weren’t all that good, but it gave me the opportunity to start seeing things in a different way.
A couple of years later, I bought my own first camera…
Chemistry
…that is what I wanted to study! Unfortunately, it turned out differently when the school closed down, forcing me to choose another field of study.
So, it became photography at a school far away from everything I knew.
Demotivated by their classic values and restrictions, there was no room for experimenting, and, as a beginning ‘artist’, I was confronted with an ‘old school mentality’.
Yet photography as a craft became a passion. The school a beginning. And the smell of developing fluids, the red light in the dark room and the drying films and pictures remain a nice memory.
It was a bit of chemistry after all…
Postcards from the Past
…A small photo shop became my working area for 7 years and later on I started being a postcard editor. …I just loved the creativity I could put into my work. I could do a bit of magic…
Some time later, the wrong business partner destroyed it all…
I lost my business…and I lost the photographer in me…
15
…years went by…
And the world had moved on. Films were replaced by SD-cards, and photo sizes came in megapixels. The dark room became Lightroom. Life had changed, and so did I.
Images developed in my mind, fed by feelings and inner peace.
The challenge was to use the camera in a way that it captured those images….and that peace.
‘The beauty is in the Artist, not in the Image’
Photography is the power to create a view, a message, or a simple image, in a world where people have lost the ability to see its beauty.
1937
…My photo bag, produced in that year, made in Payenne Switzerland
It’s an old leather bag, once used by the Swiss army, now my companion carrying my photo gear:
Hasselblad X1D II + 38 and 90 mm.
Leica CL + 18-56 mm, 55-135 mm and a 60 mm macro
Great camera’s, incredible image quality, easy to handle.
My eyes on the world…
Daniel La Grand
d.lagrand@hotmail.com
