Photographer Vojta Hurych

MY FIRST (DIGITAL) CAMERA

22/4/2014

4 minutes of reading

Trying to simplify my life it was a right time for minimalism – more precisely so far just the material minimalism. Firstly, I modestly approached heaps of useless things collected for years. Paradoxically, one is actually often out of sentiment attached to them. I offered three huge packs of clothes and several pairs of shoes to whoever needed them, books were given to an antique shop, seldom used electronics such as my mobile phone, mp3 player and my laptop denoted to a couple of people. By the way, my dad is still burning the reams of paper in the unapproved furnace... But let's speak about details some other time because I need to contemplate more about this material diet... Anyway during this really relieving event I came across a plastic "treasure" – my very first digital camera Fujifilm S5500.

As a child, I could not go unaccompanied more far away than to the "big tree". The reason was that the dangerous world would be awaiting me there or more probably my parents were not able to see more far away from our house. The tree has been staying on our street for so many years but its height is not anything special - according to the current immature man (meaning me) its height is let's say just regular. I would not expect to realize one day how it is with the height. You are definitely familiar with the following situation – after so many years you visit your childhood place and it’s different, simply it’s not so big. The Fujifilm camera is incredibly small and as beautiful as I remember it from my childhood. I remember that purposefully I used a filter adapter on it so that it looked three times bigger. Actually it seemingly resembled a reflex camera and I was not just a "looser with a compact camera". I used to like wearing it and was really proud of it and apart from that - at that time it seemed to be big enough. 

I thought that I destroyed it with show while mountain climbing in Slovenia. Maybe I was trying to find a reason to eventually buy the "big" reflex camera for which I actually managed to save money thanks to almost starving in Slovenia (of course, the official version actually was that I simply had not spent the money my parents gave me for the half a year stay). Therefore even bigger surprise was that the Fujifilm camera could still take photos after those years! Why did I change this brand to Canon then? Well, perhaps the Fuji camera was not big enough at that time for my ego, as I would expect (dear ladies please note that we are speaking solely about cameras here). The funniest thing is that I sometimes consider my current cameras for weddings as pretty clumsy (Canon 5D MII and 6D) and if it’s not necessary I use strong lens that are smaller and lighter than fisheye zoom. Anyway, I always feel like a fully armed soldier who cannot easily run as all the arms and weapons are big hindrance. For this year I am expecting 30 weddings more and I have to somehow elegantly deal with the discomfort of the sort of "two bodies in one". The other option would be to return to the sort of cameras that seemingly remind reflex cameras.

You can review yourself what I was able to photograph with this little camera at that time (in 2008). If someone would tell me at that time that my job would be the current one, I would embrace him compassionately and pay for him another round so that he would be able to encourage also some other unbelievers! :)