Content revision ea31a3343577b30cee4337cf2fef2b0864a5741341f27598e9108766c486fb2d

## My First Camera and Another Way of Seeing

Fragments
Source ID fragments:first-camera-another-way-of-seeing
Original https://www.henryw.me/#/fragments#first-camera-another-way-of-seeing

My Nikon Zfc was my first real camera. At the start I did not even need to go far. I would stand in the apartment and shoot through the small window, trying different angles and looking for things outside that I would not normally notice. After I got a longer lens it became even more interesting, since the lens could pull distant things closer and turn a random view out the window into something worth looking at.

That was probably when photography began to change my relationship with going out. The camera gave me a reason to walk more, to look around more, and later to travel with a slightly different kind of attention, not only going somewhere but also looking for frames. My mother has said that people should use their eyes to see the world instead of always taking photos, and I think she is right. There are things the eyes take in directly that a photo cannot replace, the scale of a place, the air, the movement, the feeling of being there.

I think the camera offers another way of seeing. It frames the world differently, records details I might have passed over, and lets me return to a moment later. Sometimes a photo matters to me because it records the exact angle from which I once looked at the world.