I’ve always found cameras beautiful. All the rings and controls, how you can open them and see the mechanics, how the shutter opens and closes, etc. I had an old Mir rangefinder that used to belong to one of my great grandparents but they were gone and there was nobody around able to explain how to use it or even check if it still worked. I liked to play with it when I was a child, without film, just admiring the way it looked. I didn’t have even the basic notion what an aperture was or shutter. I promised myself one day I’d have a camera “with all those rings”.

My parents had a Kodak point and shoot in the 80s. I was sometimes allowed to bring it on a school trip when I was 7–8. I would never shoot my classmates, I found that boring. I’d come back home with 36 exposures of sights, buildings, street paintings salesmen, that sort of thing.

Years went by, I began my studies at the polytechnic, first summer vacations I went to London with my boyfriend from back then. He had a Nikon SLR his dad bought back in the 80s and passed onto him. He handed it to me, explained the relation between aperture, shutter speed and film sensitivity and I could take a few shots. I knew I wanted one of my own ASAP. A few months later I saved up whatever little money I could (it was about 130 pounds) and went to the best local shop that had second-hand equipment (I didn’t even have internet back then so forget internet shopping or even investigating what camera would be suitable). The slightly newer AF cameras were out of my price range, not by much but still that meant I would still have to wait a little longer. Ended up buying a Canon AE-1 and a Tokina 28–85mm f/4 and a small external flash that came with it. I’m actually really glad I went for an all-manual camera. After all what I was after in gear was the manual controls.

A lot has changed since then in terms of what kind of equipment I use and what subjects I enjoy most but I still care about how the equipment operates as much as the images that come out.

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